A total of 11 missing persons were identified through the framework of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) this year, representative of the office of the Greek Cypriot member Leonidas Pantelides said on Thursday.

Of those 11, he said, nine are Greek Cypriots and two are Turkish Cypriots. He added that seven of those found were on the CMP’s official list of the missing, while the remaining four were not.

He said all of those identified were found in new excavations, meaning that no previous attempts had been made at the sites at which they were found.

In total this year, excavations have been carried out at a total of 102 sites across the island, with bones having been found in five separate locations: in the villages of Bellapas, Karavas, and Lapithos, Trachonas in Nicosia, and Aloa in the Famagusta district.

At present, a total of seven teams are carrying out excavations in the villages of Ayia Marina Skyllouras between Nicosia and Morphou, Assia in the Famagusta district, Louroujina between Nicosia and Larnaca, Lapithos, Konia in the Paphos district, Omorphita in Nicosia, and Sysklipos in the Kyrenia district.

There are a total of 2,002 missing persons, of whom 1,051 have been identified to date, while exactly 216 persons have been identified after not having been included on the CMP’s official list of the missing.

The joint investigation process for approximately 100 cases has already been completed, while around 300 cases are currently under investigation by the office of the Greek Cypriot member.

The release of this year’s statistics come a day after the European Union announced the donation of €2.6 million to the CMP, bringing its total donation to €41.1m since 2007.

Earlier this year, Swiss national Pierre Gentile began his duties as the CMP’s third member, succeeding his compatriot Paul-Henri Arni.

Before taking up the role in Cyprus, Gentile had previously worked as the director of the Social Centre for the Integration of Refugees in the Swiss city of Lausanne, and also served in various roles in the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Arni praised the CMP’s relative success when he left the role last year, saying Cyprus has the “second-best results in the world” regarding the search for missing persons.

There are 42 countries in the world in which there are missing persons from conflict or political violence, and Henri said in most of those, the success rate for finding their remains is below 20 per cent.