An international charity has urged Bosnians whose relatives were reported missing during the Bosnian war to give blood to speed up the identification of bodies.

There are probably 15,000 or more bodies still to be recovered Gordon Bacon, ICMP

The International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) said its new DNA matching technique would be more effective if it had blood samples from family members to compare with samples from bodies.

The ICMP said it was already identifying more than 200 bodies a month, but said it had more than 4,000 bodies with unmatched DNA codes.

About 30,000 people went missing during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, and the ICMP said there were about 12,000 exhumed bodies in Bosnian mortuaries still awaiting identification.

Grim task

"We need family members to continue to give blood samples," said the ICMP's representative Gordon Bacon, quoted by the AFP news agency.

It is hoped that naming the dead will ease the grief

Mr Bacon said the ICMP had profiles of more than 4,000 bodies, but added that "we do not have the blood references from the family members".

The ICMP said more than 1,200 bodies have been identified since the organisation introduced DNA testing in 2001.

The commission now has four DNA laboratories in Bosnia, collecting blood and bone samples to help identification.

"But there are probably 15,000 or more bodies still to be recovered," Mr Bacon said.

Some 40,000 civilians were murdered as Serbs, Muslims and Croats fought for control of Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. Most of the victims were male, and most were Muslims.

The task of putting names to the bones in the mass graves was so big that the group of industrialised countries, G7, decided to create the ICMP in 1996 to deal with the issue.

About 250,000 people were killed during the Bosnian war, and more than two million were forced to flee their homes to become refugees.