Story Highlights
* Nearly 18,000 people still missing from Balkans wars fought of 1990s
* Those missing "may be victims of mass executions"
* 200,000 killed during the war in Bosnia, 20,000 in Croatia, 10,000 in Kosovo

Nearly 18,000 people are still missing from the ethnic wars fought in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday.

About 13,500 of those missing are from the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, while 2,386 are from the 1991-95 conflict in Croatia and 2,047 from the 1998-99 strife in Kosovo, the ICRC said in a statement on the occasion of the International Day of the Disappeared.

"For years now, ever since the conflict in former Yugoslavia broke out, the ICRC has strived to support the plea of the families of missing persons, hoping to bring about more answers on the fate of their beloved," Paul Henri Arni, the head of the Red Cross in Belgrade, said in the statement.

Those missing "may be victims of mass executions thrown into unmarked graves, they may be captured or abducted, they may be arrested at their homes and then die in custody," the statement said.

The disappearance is itself a tragedy, Arni said, but "the other victims are the families suspended in limbo, suspecting their loved ones are dead, yet unable to mourn."

There, the statement continued, it is "vital that the issue of the missing be seriously addressed and that the families' right to know the fate of their loved ones be upheld."

The bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia -- the worst carnage in Europe since World War II -- started when the Serb-led Yugoslav army tried to prevent separatists in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo from seceding from the former federation.

Officially, about 200,000 people were killed during the war in Bosnia, although a recent independent study put the figure at less than 100,000. An estimated 20,000 people were killed in Croatia, and about 10,000 in Kosovo.