NEO KHORIO KYTHREAS: A pneumatic drill pierces the calm of a Cypriot village as a forensic team searches the backyard of a home for the remains of a father and son missing since the Turkish invasion of 1974.

The two Greek Cypriots are among a total of nearly 2,000 residents of the island unaccounted for after the sectarian bloodshed of the 1960s and 1970s.

And as Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot leaders begin new peace talks this month, the search for their remains goes on.

The search in Neo Khoria Kythreas, known as Minarelikoy in Turkish, came in response to information from Turkish Cypriot representatives on the UN Committee for Missing Persons that the two men had been executed and their bodies dumped in the village 34 years ago.

The committee has been working since 1981 to trace the 1,468 Greek Cypriots and 502 Turkish Cypriots who vanished during the island’s communal bloodletting.

Wounds are still raw in both communities over the decade of violence that ripped the island apart between 1963 and 1974 – when Turkish troops invaded the northern third.

In Neo Khoria, villagers gathered around the workmen to watch the spectacle. They are all Turkish Cypriots, as the Turkish invasion prompted all Greek Cypriots to flee.

“The people are curious, they ask so many questions, but we cannot give any details because of a confidentiality agreement,” said Deran Ceker Ruhi, a Turkish Cypriot member of the forensic team.

“In most cases, they already know why we are here,” she added.

If the excavation turns up any remains, they will be transferred to the committee’s forensic laboratory at the former Nicosia airport in the UN-controlled buffer zone that divides the island.

Partly financed by Greece and Turkey, the laboratory has identified and returned to their families the remains of 105 people, 26 of them Turkish Cypriots, since it opened in August 2006.

A team of eight scientists – four from each community – work on the laborious process of reconstructing the skeletons and discovering which vertebra, femur or clavicle belongs to which person.

“Our goal is to give back a complete body, but in some cases it is impossible,” laboratory head Megan Bassendale said.

“We can determine sex, age at the time of death, height and make an inventory of traumas, but it is not our job to say what killed the victim.”

UN representative Christophe Girod said the aim of the missing persons’ committee is to provide closure for bereaved relatives.

“The families are relieved. They finally get an answer.”

He praised the work of the committee as one of the rare examples of cooperation between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots, stressing that “everything has been done to de-politicise the issue and make it a humanitarian question”.

Before Greek Cypriots elected President Demetris Christofias in February on a platform of reviving reunification talks, “the question of the missing people was the only one which had made concrete progress,” Girod said.

Nicos Theodosiou, 48, is president of the Greek Cypriot Organisation for Relatives of Undeclared Prisoners and Missing People in Cyprus. He is still searching for his soldier brother, Demetrios, who vanished in August 1974 in Kyrenia, where the Turkish troops landed.

“Justice is not the purpose, as only two or three of the 79 families (whose missing loved ones have so far been identified) are thinking of an appeal against Turkey,” he said.“People are different before and after they have buried their relatives.

They want to have a grave to go to and mourn. That’s all the families want.”

But for some, even funerals cannot ease their suffering.

“The pain is always the same,” mourned Keti Kosma, 66, who buried the remains of her husband in July 2007 after a 33-year wait.

“The hurt will only stop when I myself close my eyes forever,” she said.—AFP