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Urals remains belong to last Russian tsar's children - DNA test -2

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DNA tests have revealed that bones found near the city of Yekaterinburg in the Urals belonged to Prince Alexei and his elder sister Maria, the children of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, investigators said on Wednesday.
(Expands quote in para 3, adds para 4, descendants, church reaction in last seven paras)

MOSCOW, July 16 (RIA Novosti) - DNA tests have revealed that bones found near the city of Yekaterinburg in the Urals belonged to Prince Alexei and his elder sister Maria, the children of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, investigators said on Wednesday.

"The overall data obtained during a DNA analysis...supports the theory that the remains of Prince Alexei and Grand Princess Maria have been found," the Main Investigation Committee said in a statement.

"Experts managed to extract enough DNA for tests even though the bone fragments had been burnt and soaked in acid," the committee said.

The tsar family's remains were burnt and soaked in acid in 1918 to hinder identification, and to prevent them from becoming the objects of veneration.

The bones, found on July 29, 2007, have been examined by a total of 22 experts from 12 different laboratories.

Tests are continuing however. Forensic experts will later compare the DNA extracted from the bones with DNA taken from the blood-stained shirt that Nicholas II was wearing during a failed assassination attempt in Japan in 1890.

The announcement comes on the 90th anniversary of the execution of Russia's last tsar and his family.

Nicholas II, abdicated in March 1917, and his family were detained by the Bolsheviks after that year's October Revolution. The tsar, his wife Alexandra, and their children, Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Alexei, and Anastasia, as well as several servants, were executed by a firing squad in a basement of a house in Yekaterinburg on July 16, 1918.

The bodies of all the family, except for those of Maria and Alexei, were found in 1991 and buried in the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg in 1998, although the DNA tests confirming that they were Romanov remains have since been challenged.

The initial failure to locate the bodies of Maria and Alexei fueled rumors that they had somehow survived.

The last tsar's great-grandson, Dmitry Romanov, who heads the Romanovs for Russia foundation, welcomed the news.

"It is very important to me. It is an official confirmation... The family had hoped this would happen some day," Romanov said on the Ekho Moskvy radio station in St. Petersburg.

However, the Russian Orthodox Church urged more studies to prove that the remains belong to the tsar's children.

"An independent commission comprising representatives of different areas of science, including historians, forensic experts, as well as Russian Orthodox Church officials, should be set up to assess the test results," said Father Vladimir Vigilyansky, head of the Moscow Patriarchy's press service.

The Church, which has canonized the Romanovs, called the 1998 burial of the tsar and his family a "political show."

Vigilyansky said trying to prove that the remains found in 2007 are genetically linked to the bones discovered 10 years ago makes no sense as the identities of the remains were established "under pressure from the authorities."

Vigilyansky said the Church will not set out its final position on the matter until a special commission has studied the test results.

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