Newsroom
Nearly four decades after a worker reported finding human remains beneath a hotel under construction in Lapithos, archaeologists are watching the unfinished building come down. They hope the demolition will give them access to the spot the worker described.
Construction on the unauthorized hotel in the occupied north began in the late 1980s. When remains were uncovered, the contractor ordered workers to cover them and carry on building, Leonidas Pantelides, the Greek Cypriot representative on the Committee on Missing Persons, told the Cyprus News Agency. The witness gave a detailed account of where the remains had been found, but efforts to persuade the contractor to cooperate went nowhere.
Financial problems eventually halted construction. When a new contractor decided to tear down the building, he agreed to let the committee’s archaeologists monitor the demolition and excavate if they could pinpoint the site. Two teams arrived in Nov. 2. “We are optimistic,” Pantelides told CNA.
A well beneath a garden
The hotel is one of several cases where construction or a change in property ownership has affected access to a suspected burial site. In another case, eight soldiers are believed to be buried in a well beneath the garden of a villa. A previous owner refused to allow a search. The committee is now in talks with the new owner, who Pantelides said was more open to the idea.
The well is no longer visible. If the committee gets access, investigators plan to use ground-penetrating radar to scan beneath the garden and locate it.
Hundreds of cases still under investigation
At a separate excavation in Lapithos, archaeologists recovered the remains of two people during the first phase of work. In Trikomo, a team is investigating a well after receiving information that Turkish Cypriots who went missing in 1963–64 and Greek Cypriots who went missing in 1974 may have been buried at the same site.
About 100 cases have already been investigated and are awaiting excavation as teams become available, Pantelides said. About 300 more are still being investigated.
The committee has identified 1,090 of the 2,002 people on its official list, including 765 Greek Cypriots and 325 Turkish Cypriots. It has also identified 217 people outside that list. So far this year, it has made 28 identifications, compared with 12 in all of 2025.
Pantelides also called for limited flexibility to help families whose relatives are known to have died but whose cases fall outside the committee’s mandate. He suggested allowing five to 10 such excavations a year when families request them.
The committee was set up by the two communities to recover and identify people who went missing during the intercommunal fighting of 1963–64 and in 1974 and to return their remains to their families.
