Mass grave with skeletal remains of over 150 people found in Sri Lanka

A mass grave with skeletal remains of around 151 people have been found in Sri Lanka's former war zone where the government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels were engaged in a 30-year civil war, officials said on Wednesday.

At least 14 of the skeletal remains found in the northeastern district of Mannar were of children.

The digging work at the old cooperative store site in Mannar was conducted for the 79th day Tuesday to establish if it was a mass burial site.

In March, the construction workers had found remains when the ground was dug to build a new construction. Excavations were on since March.

The remains have been kept in a special room of the Mannar magistrate court and will be sent for carbon testing.

Amidst international complaints of large numbers of missing in Sri Lanka's conflicts since the 1980, the office of missing persons was set up this year.

Various probes set up from time to time since the 1990s have found that nearly 25,000 people are missing as a result of the armed conflicts.

Mannar was occupied by the LTTE during Sri Lanka's civil war between 1983 and 2009. International rights groups have said that at least 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed by government forces under the command of former president Mahinda Rajapakse in the final months of the war.

Since the end of the military battles, Sri Lanka has faced international accusations of rights abuses by its troops.