International experts will join Irish counterparts to uncover an unmarked mass burial site for children at a former mother and baby home in Tuam in western Ireland, the director of the excavation team said on Monday.
Staff from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States have joined the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) team in Tuam, its director Daniel MacSweeney said at a press conference in the town.
The full-scale excavation of the site in Tuam - 135 miles west of Dublin - will start next week and is expected to last two years, said MacSweeney.
The work at the burial site, which is being undertaken by the ODAIT, will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible, and re-interment of the remains of infants who died at the home between 1925 and 1961.
Niamh McCullagh, ODAIT's Senior Forensic Consultant, said that the random nature in which remains were buried added to the difficulty.
