"During the war in Bosnia 93,837 soldiers and civilians were killed," said Mirsad Tokaca, the head of the non-governmental Research and Documentation Center that compiled the report.

Although there are no official figures, Bosnian and international officials have often used the figure of some 200,000 deaths in the inter-ethnic war.

Sixty-nine percent of those killed were ethnic Muslims, 26 percent Serbs and five percent Croats, said Tokaca, adding that the Sarajevo-based organisation possesses more than 50,000 photographs of the victims.

The research, financially backed by Norway's NGO Nansen Dialogue Centre, was conducted to "establish the truth and to prevent any manipulation" of the number of victims, he said.

"Different estimates of people killed in Bosnia have been used and they ranged from denial of crimes by mentioning some 10,000 or 15,000 to exaggeration and mentioning of 300,000 even 350,000 victims," Tokaca said.

The total was not a final figure and there could be minor changes to it, he said, calling on all families to report deaths of their loved ones.

Tokaca, who criticised Bosnia's government for not supporting the project, said the total used by authorities was much higher because some names of those killed appeared in the official toll several times depending on the organisations.

Asked to comment, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it "welcomes every initiative that can help to shed more light" on the number of victims.

"This is not a final document but it can help official institutions which are working on it," Sanela Bajrambasic, the ICRC spokeswoman in Sarajevo, told

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