Remains of 13 people who went missing in Abkhaz war returned to Tbilisi

Remains of Georgian citizens returned from Abkhazia

The remains of 13 people – six military servicemen and seven civilians – who went missing during the armed Georgian-Abkhaz conflict in the early 1990s have been identified and returned to Tbilisi with the help of the Red Cross.

A memorial service will be held at the Holy Trinity Cathedral (Sameba) in Tbilisi on April 23-24. Upon the request of the families of the deceased, the remains will be buried in various places, including in ancestral cemeteries. The remains of the four military men will be buried with military honors at the fraternal cemetery in the Digomi district of Tbilisi.

“More than 2,300 Georgian citizens remain missing as a result of the hostilities of the 1990s [the Georgian-Ossetian and Georgian-Abkhaz conflicts] and the August 2008 war [the Georgian-Russian five-day war over South Ossetia]. Determining their fate and whereabouts is part of the state policy”, the State Minister’s Office for Reconciliation and Civil Equality said in an official statement.

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• In 2010, under the auspices of the Red Cross, a bilateral coordination group was established to lead search parties for individuals who went missing as a result of the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. The negotiations resulted in an agreement to enter the fraternal cemetery in the village of Babushera in Abkhazia and exhume the bodies buried there.

• Since 2010, the bodies of 325 people who went missing during the armed conflict in Abkhazia have been found. 126 of them have been identified and the identification of the rest of the individuals continues.

• The armed conflict in Abkhazia began on August 14, 1992, lasted 13 months and 13 days, and ended on September 27, 1993, with the defeat of the Georgian armed forces. Various sources report that the armed conflict claimed the lives of more than 13,000 people and approximately 300,000 people from Abkhazia had been internally displaced.