BELGRADE, Serbia-Fourteen former Serb fighters went on trial Thursday on charges that they killed 70 Croat civilians in 1991 after forcing some of them to walk through a minefield.

The group includes former Yugoslav army soldiers and paramilitary fighters suspected of "torture, inhuman treatment and killing" of the Croats in a border town in Croatia during the war there.

Croatian investigations have discovered dozens of bodies in mass graves in the village of Lovas, the remains of people apparently killed in October and November 1991 when Serbs controlled the area.

The Serbian prosecutors charged the Serb fighters with killing 22 Croats by forcing them to march over a minefield as a human shield. Another 48 villagers were shot dead in their houses, on the streets or in detention, the indictment said.

The war in Croatia erupted in 1991, when the republic declared independence from the Yugoslav federation, triggering a Serb rebellion backed by the Serb-led Yugoslav army. The war lasted until 1995.

Prosecution of Serbs responsible for atrocities in the war became possible after the removal of the late leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 by Serbia's pro-democracy forces.