Yekaterinburg, January 9, Interfax - Forensic scientists have begun tests to identify fragments of what are suspected to have been the bodies of the son and one of the daughters of last Russian tsar Nicholas II who, with the rest of the royal family, were put to death by a Bolshevik firing squad in July 1918.

The fragments were found near the Staraya Koptyakovskaya Road outside Yekaterinburg and bore traces of homicide. Initial investigations suggested there were parts of the bodies of a boy aged between 10 and 14 and a woman of 20.

Yekaterinburg is the city in the Ural area where Nicholas, his family and part of their retinue were executed.

The Sverdlovsk Regional Bureau for Forensic Medical Tests and a lab in Moscow are trying to find out whether the remains are those of Alexey, who was heir to the throne, and Maria.

"I expect [the findings of the investigations to come] by the end of January or the start of February," Nikolay Nevolin, head of the Sverdlovsk Bureau, told Interfax.

"Tests started in December at our lab and in Moscow. When the tests in Russia are over, there will be confirmation tests at one of the foreign labs, one the Prosecutor General's Office chooses," Nevolin said.

It has been possible to obtain DNA samples from the remains, he said.