Every time a mass grave is excavated in Sri Lanka, Thambirasa Selvarani can't sleep.

"We don't know what happened to our relatives, and when they start digging, I feel panicked," Selvarani told DW.

The 54-year-old has been searching for her husband, Muthulingam Gnanaselvam, since he disappeared in May 2009 after he surrendered to government forces at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. After decades of fighting, the conflict ended with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE),also known as the Tamil Tigers.

Multiple mass graves have been uncovered since then. For the last three months, archaeologists have been excavating a mass grave in Chemmani, on the outskirts of Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka's Northern Province. The excavation has unearthed 140 skeletons so far, including children.

Chemmani has been suspected as a mass grave site since at least 1998. A former army corporal, who at the time was on trial for the rape and murder of schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, said there were hundreds of other bodies buried in the area alongside the young girl.

Lawyer Niranchan told DW he was working with families whose relatives had disappeared from the area surrounding Chemmani in the 1990s.

So far, the excavations have shown that bodies were buried "haphazardly, without any legal barriers, heaped together in a shallow, unmarked" fashion.

"We think some of them could have been buried alive," he said, adding, "if they were already dead, the........

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