Unmarked graves identified in Colombia

The Colombian government has identified the remains of almost 10,000 people buried in unmarked graves across the country, officials said. The Legal Medicine Institute in Colombia has issued identity documents of 9,969 people suspected of being victims of the decades-long conflict between leftist guerrillas and right-wing militias, El Espectador reported Friday. The process of identifying remains was carried out by comparing fingerprints taken from bodies at morgues with data from the national registry. Politician Ivan Cepeda said at least 10,000 more bodies in graves could not be identified because of the lack of identity documents or fingerprints that were not taken properly. Of the 8,810 men and 1,159 women identified, the bodies were exhumed from the graves and returned to their families. The interior minister, German Vargas Lleras, said it is "fundamental for advancing legal human rights proceedings" to identify the remains.