Last passengers of doomed Babushera flight returned to loved one
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The bodies of 12 Georgians found in mass grave in Abkhazia, at Sokhumi’s Babushera Airport have been identified and returned to their loved ones for an honourable burial.
Eleven of the 12 victims were military servants and one was a civil citizen. All but one of the victims died in the Babushera tragedy 21 years ago and one person was killed in a battle in Achadara at the same time. Two of the victims were female.
The identified people are: Amiran Gegeshidze, Soso Gurgenidze, Malkhaz Jioshvili, Aleksandre Chikviladze, Goga Gogalidze, Marina Tabatadze, Zaal Amashukeli, Emzar Tutusani, Vladimer Muradov, Geno Kvitsiani and Venera Gabunia. The identity of one victim was not released by officials for an unknown reason.
The 12 victims were among a group of 31 Georgians that were transferred from Abkhazia to Georgia’s capital Tbilisi a few months ago.
The remaining 19 bodies are yet to be formally identified.
Zhuzhuna Okruashvili's then 32-year-old son Zura was on board the plane that was shot down at Babushera.
The identified victims were transferred from the Levan Samkharauli National Forensic Bureau to the Holy Trinity Church where their burial services were conducted at 6pm tonight. All 12 bodies will soon be buried at Tbilisi Brothers’ Military Cemetery.
Twelve more heroes’ bodies are identified and have returned home. It is a big relief for the family members as they know where the graveyards of their dead family members are. Out of 12 bodies two are women’s,” said Minister of Refugees Sozar Subari.
In 2010, under the aegis of the Red Cross, a collaborative team was set up to study missing persons’ cases dating back to 1992-93.
This team was tasked with finding out what happened to the people who were missing after the Babushera plane tragedy in 1993.
The families of 19 victims still are waiting for the identification of their family members' bodies.
On September 20, 1993, a plane carrying more than 120 people from Tbilisi was shot down while landing at Babushera Airport in Sokhumi during the Abkhaz war. The event happened a few days before Tbilisi lost the battle for Sokhumi on September 27, 1993.
The local authorities began to excavate several graves at Babushera Cemetery on May 8 following long-time Georgian-Abkhazian negotiations.
To date, 47 bodies have been transferred from the Abkhazian gravesite to Tbilisi. Before the May 2015 transfer of 31 bodies, the last transfer happened in 2001.
Four of the 47 bodies have been reburied by the victims’ families. Forty-three lie in the Vashlijvari Cemetery in Tbilisi while 19 still remained unidentified.
International experts will help identify the victims who are still unidentified. DNA samples have been taken from victims’ family members and matched with DNA taken from the deceased to help discover who they are.
Abkhazia, which lies on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, is one of the two breakaway regions of Georgia currently occupied by Russian forces.
See the multimedia story by Agenda.ge about the Babushera tragedy here.
Five bodies unearthed at Babushera’s mass grave in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region have been identified and returned to their families.
Georgian Ministry of Refugees officials and representatives of the de-facto Abkhazian government met today under the auspices of the International Red Cross Commission where they discussed issues relating to the searching and transferring of bodies of those missing since the Georgia-Abkhazian conflict in the early 1990s.
Four soldiers who died in a plane crash while on a military mission 21 years ago have been buried with full military honours at the Digomi Brothers’ Cemetery today.
Four bodies unearthed at Babushera’s mass grave in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region have been identified, enabling a Georgian woman who has dressed in black for the past 21 years to finally give her loved ones a proper burial.
The bodies of 31 Georgians who died in a plane crash in Abkhazia have returned home, 21 years on from the tragedy.
Excavation of Georgian remains found in a mass grave in Abkhazia at Sokhumi’s Babushera Airport in September 1993 has begun, with authorities hoping to identify the remains and return the bodies’ home to Georgia.
The bodies of 10 Georgians found in a mass grave in Abkhazia have been identified and returned to their loved ones for an honourable burial. All of the victims were military servants who lost their lives in a war in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region 23 years ago.
Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili has paid tribute to the fallen soldiers whose bodies were lost in the breakaway Abkhazia territory for 23 years before they were returned home for an honourable burial.
The bodies of 12 more Georgians found in a mass grave in Abkhazia, at Sokhumi’s Babushera Airport have been identified and will today finally rest in peace at the Tbilisi Brothers’ Military Cemetery.
The bodies of over a dozen victims who fought and died for Georgia's territorial integrity in the 1992-1993 war in breakaway Abkhazia region will be buried with military honours at a Tbilisi cemetery tomorrow.
The remains of five missing individuals who went missing during the 1992-1993 armed conflicts in the Russian-occupied Georgian region of Abkhazia have been identified and a memorial service will be held today and tomorrow at Trinity Cathedral in Tbilisi, Interpressnews (IPN) reports.
Georgian prime minister Irakli Garibashvili on Tuesday reiterated the importance of peaceful reintegration of the Russian-occupied Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) regions of Georgia in comments marking the 29th anniversary of the fall of Sokhumi, the regional capital of the former, in the 1992-1993 conflict in the north-western region.