BLINDFOLDS FOUND AT BOSNIAN GRAVE SITE.

U.N. investigators on Thursday stacked up rows of blindfolds on a muddy hillside, powerful evidence that beneath them lay the victims of an ethnic massacre.

The dozens of blindfolds, strips of cloth mostly in dark colors, support survivors' accounts that up to 7,000 men were slaughtered by the Bosnian Serbs who overran the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica the past summer.

In Bosnia's first spring thaw in peace after nearly four years of war, investigators are spreading out in pursuit of human remains and other physical evidence to back up such accounts. What they find will be used by the war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands to prosecute those responsible.

Other mass graves dot Bosnia - Bosnian Serbs have excavated more than 100 bodies near the western town of Mrkonjic Grad since Saturday. The Serbs say the victims apparently were killed by Croats.

But Srebrenica appears to be the site of the worst massacre of the war, and the fields around it have come to symbolize the horror of Bosnia's ordeal.

Survivors say that after July's fall of Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb fighters loaded the men into trucks and brought them to a school gymnasium near Sahinici, 35 miles from Srebrenica.

At the school, survivors say, the men were ordered to remove their hats and coats, then were blindfolded. They were then taken to two fields and shot. Their bodies were buried in mass graves.

The blindfolds found Thursday are believed to be unused ones taken from the school to be disposed of in the fields where the bodies were buried.

The six investigators recovered the blindfolds and clothing from brush off a hillside road. Digging into one of the fields with trowels and spades, they found more clothing and some bones.

They gathered the evidence in plastic wrap. One man carrying a bone photographed some of the remains, and talked into a tape recorder to describe them.

The investigators sorted the blindfolds and stacked them in about 10 neat rows to take inventory. Because they roped off the area, it was impossible to get close enough to say exactly how many there were, but it appeared there were between five and 10 in each row.

The war crimes tribunal has indicted the Bosnian Serbs' highest leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, for their alleged roles in the Srebrenica massacre. Two Bosnian Serb soldiers who are suspected of taking part have been extradited from Serbia to the tribunal.

The team began investigating the suspected mass grave site Wednesday and has found more than 50 pieces of evidence, including a whole skeleton. The investigators plan to return for a third day Friday to inspect the second field. Each field is about the size of a basketball court.

There have been reports that the Serbs tampered with the sites to cover up their alleged war crimes.

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PHOTO Investigators lay out blindfolds Thursday at the site of a suspected mass grave near Srebrenica, Bosnia.

Associated Press