Colombia to exhume Medellin graves

BOGOTA,
Colombian authorities will this month begin
the grisly task of carrying  out what could
be the largest exhumation of unmarked graves
in the conflict torn country 's history local
media reported Sunday,

Caterina Heyck who is overeeing the
operation for national prosecutors told Eltlempo
newspaper that exhumation would begin July
27 in the Commune 13 neighborhood
of Medellin,

Investigators believe this area in Colombia
's second city has a large number of corpses
of people  killed in the country 's decades
long conflict,

Heyck said the process would be'complex"
because investigators would need to match
any eventual DNA samples to those given by
relatives of missing people ,

The South American nation is still in the
grips of a half century civil war that has
drawn in left wing gurerrillas ,right wing
paramilitaries and drug gangs at various
times killing  more than 220,000 people and
uprooting as many as six million

This no official number f missing people
though estimates put the figure at between
15,000 and 20,000.

The government opened peace talks in
November 2012 with the largest rebel group
,the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC)

It has also  started talks with another leftist
guerrillas group,The National Liberation Army
(ELN) AFP