Remains of Tsar's missing kids found: Experts

Moscow, Aug 25: Russian forensic experts said today they may have found the remains of two children of the last Tsar whose bodies have been missing since a Bolshevik firing squad executed Russia's royal family in 1918.

Examination of bones discovered near to the site where the rest of the family were found suggests they belong to Tsar Nicholas II's 13-year-old heir, Prince Alexei, and his daughter Maria, the scientists said. DNA testing still needs to be done to confirm the find.

''It is most likely that this second burial place is linked to the first one. Everyone knows who they belong to,'' said Sergei Pogorelov, a historian with the local administration in the Sverdlovsk region.

The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office said it was formally reopening its investigation into the case.

Bolshevik revolutionaries shot the royal family in the basement of a merchant's house in the city of Yekaterinburg, 1,450 km east of Moscow. Attempts were made to destroy the bodies, then they were dumped into pits.

Following the collapse of Communist rule, remains believed to belong to the Tsar, his wife and three daughters were exhumed and reburied in 1998 in the imperial crypt of St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

But Prince Alexei Nikolayevich and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna were not among those remains. Scientists, prosecutors and amateur historians have mounted a huge operation to find them while some speculated they might have survived.

''We need to be very careful about all these finds,'' Ivan Artsishevsky, part of a group that says it represents surviving members of the Romanov family, told Ekho Moskvy radio station.

But he added: ''This is a very important event for the family and for the whole history of Russia.'' The scientists told a news conference in Yekaterinburg that the newly unearthed bones belonged to two young people aged about 14 and 20, and had been found close to the burial site of the other members of the royal family.

A total of 44 bone fragments were discovered, with bullets found close enough nearby to indicate to the forensic experts that they had been inside the victims' bodies before they decomposed.

Reuters>