Police inquiries in Gostinu and the surrounding region of Giugiu found at least 16 other cases, including nine on the farm where Gheorghita was electrocuted after climbing a telegraph pole while tending the pigs.Officials believe other "masters" have gone into hiding since the accident."The whole area has been poisoned by this new phenomenon. Hospital officials refused to hand the child over and called the authorities.Investigators found that Gheorghita and his younger brother had been working on the Gostinu pig farm for more than a year, after the farmer bought them for £140.Save the Children said the brothers were the victims of a new trade in which employers from better-off areas in the south of the country were buying child labour from the impoverished north-east."This is modern-day slavery," said George Roman, a programme director for Save the Children. He said the boys were not alone and that dozens of others were doing hard labour, some as young as nine.The case has revealed the growing wealth gap in the European Union candidate country which is negotiating to join the 25-country bloc in 2007. As doctors struggled to save the boy's life a farmer from Gostinu, a village 30 miles south of the capital, arrived to claim him The man said he was the child's "master".

A near-fatal accident on a pig farm in Romania has uncovered a brutal new trade in forced labour in which poverty-stricken parents sell their children into slavery for as little as £70. Many drowned in the mud.¿ Military historians consider the offensive planned by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig to be largely a failure The assault advanced the Allied lines by just five miles.. Drainage systems were damaged and the battleground was cratered. About 12,000 men died at Pilkem Ridge on 31 July.¿ As the offensive continued, conditions were made worse by the heaviest rains for 30 years, which turned the area into a sea of mud by the end of the summer. Germans used mustard gas in their defence.¿ The third battle caused 325,000 Allied and 260,000 German casualties. Around 59,000 British, 10,000 French and 35,000 Germans died.¿ The third battle began with a lengthy Allied bombardment which gave the Germans time to prepare for the attack. No announcement will be made until checks are completed and any surviving family is traced.The slaughter at Ypres¿ There were major battles at Ypres in 1914, 1915 and in 1917, which culminated in the Battle of Passchendaele in November.

There were two further smaller offensives before the Armistice.¿ The trenches at Pilkem Ridge were in use between the second battle of Ypres and the opening assault of the third, on 31 July 1917.¿ The second battle was the only major attack launched by the Germans on the Western Front in 1915 and marked the first use of gas there, when the Germans released 168 tons of chlorine in April.¿ The offensive continued until the end of May 1915 and included many more gas attacks. The trenches discovered near Pilkem are believed to have been built by the British Army in 1915 after they were pushed back by a German gas attack.The trenches remained the front line for British and Commonwealth troops until 31 July 1917 when 12,000 soldiers died in one day on Pilkem Ridge in the first attack of the battle which ended in the mud in the village of Passchendaele, five miles to the east, just over four months later. Over 35,000 British soldiers and 35,000 Germans died in the battle for Passchendaele - a failed attempt to break through the German lines and reach Bruges and Brussels, forcing an early end to the war.The identity of the Northumberland Fusilier whose body was found near the trenches several weeks ago has been provisionally identified. That is the importance of a find like this."Belgian officials have argued that similar trench patterns could be found by excavating elsewhere, out of the path of the motorway, but local historians say this is not necessarily true. "This is the last part of the main British trench fortifications in the Ypres salient which has not been covered over by housing or other roads," a local historian said. "This is our last chance to show people what the battlefield really looked like."There were five great battle in the Ypres area in the 1914-18 war. "The archeological excavations have uncovered far more than anyone could have imagined.