Georgia-Abkhazia negotiations to find victims of conflict continues

Georgian Ministry of Refugees officials and representatives of the de-facto Abkhazian government held a meeting under the auspices of the International Red Cross Commission today where they discussed issues relating to the searching and transferring of bodies of those missing since the Georgia-Abkhazian conflict in the early 1990s.

"Another round of negotiations under the Red Cross International was quite fruitful and productive,” said Georgia's Deputy Minister of Refugees Gogi Patsatsia after the meeting. 

At the meeting both parties agreed to meet regularly and decided to exhume several bodies in different regions of Georgia, including Abkhazia, in spring.

The Georgian-Abkhazian bilateral coordination mechanism worked within the framework of the International Red Cross Commission and aimed to find people lost during the 1992-1993 war.

As a result of the negotiations, 30 victims of the Babushera plane crash have been unearthed from the Babushera mass grave in Abkhazia and were transferred to Georgia. Four bodies have already been identified.

The thirty people were among 132 people travelling on a plane from Tbilisi to Sokhumi, the capital city of Abkhazia, on September 22, 1993 when it was shot down while attempting to land at Babushera Airport. The aircraft crashed on the runway, killing 108 of the 132 people on board.

See a multimedia story about the victims and survivors of the Babushera tragedy here.