Red Cross Identifies the Missing of Abkhazia Conflict
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, April 24
(TBILISI) - International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on Monday that the remains of 22 more people who went missing during the 1992–93 armed conflict in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region have been identified and will be handed over to their families shortly.
Since the coordination mechanism was first set up in 2010 with the technical and financial support of the ICRC, the remains of 325 people who went missing during the conflict have been recovered.
Of these, 148 have been identified; identification of all the other remains is ongoing, ICRC reported.
“Today, the decades of uncertainty are over for another 22 families,” said Biljana Milosevic, the head of the ICRC’s delegation in Georgia.
”But more than 2,400 people remain unaccounted for as a result of the conflicts of the 1990s and August 2008. Families have the right to know what happened to them,” Milosevic added.
The War in Abkhazia 1992-1993 was fought between Georgian government forces for the most part, and Abkhaz separatist forces, Russian armed forces and North Caucasian militants. The separatists received support from thousands of North Caucasus and Cossack militants and from the Russian forces stationed in and near Abkhazia.
Between 13,000 to 20,000 ethnic Georgians and approximately 3,000 Abkhaz have been reported killed, more than 250,000 Georgians became internally displaced or refugees and about 2,000 are considered missing.
Among the missing about 1,500 are Georgians, up to 200 are Abkhazians and about 100 -Ossetians.
Now Abkhazia and Tskhinvali regions, 20 percent of the territory of Georgia, are occupied by Russia.
