(The Local) Germany launched a project on Friday to shed light on the identities of the hundreds of people killed along its internal Cold War border while trying to flee the communist East.
While research into deaths at the Berlin Wall was completed in 2009, there has been no official effort so far to clarify the number and names of those killed along the longer border between the former East and West Germany.
Researcher Klaus Schroeder, of Berlin's Free University, who is leading the three-year project, said he believes 500 to 700 people died along the nearly 1,400 kilometre (nearly 870 mile) border between 1949 and 1989.
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