Srebrenica victims remembered 19 years on

A total of 175 newly-identified massacre victims were laid to rest after a commemoration ceremony held in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

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Newly-identified massacre victims were laid to rest after a ceremony held in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica (AFP/Getty)

Thousands of people have gathered in Srebrenica to mark the 19th anniversary of the massacre of some 8000 Muslim men and boys by ethnic Serb forces, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

A total of 175 newly-identified massacre victims were laid to rest after a commemoration ceremony held in Potocari, just outside the ill-fated Bosnian town.

"This evil has still not been defeated. It will be when the flower of repentance flourishes," said Bosnia's grand mufti Husein Kavazovic, referring to the refusal by many Bosnian Serbs to recognise the scale of the genocide.

Around 15,000 people watched coffins filled with the victims' remains and draped in green cloth laid to rest in freshly dug graves at a memorial cemetery.
Mustafa Delic buried his three brothers, the youngest aged just 21 when he was killed.

"Waiting was painful, but the moment has come to end this. One has to turn the page since life continues whether you want it to or not," the 50-year-old Srebrenica survivor said.

"We did not have time to say goodbye... We were five brothers, and three of us had no luck," he added.

The youngest victim buried during Friday's service was just 14 when he was killed. Among the others were 13 boys aged between 15 and 17.

So far, the remains of 6066 people have been exhumed from mass graves in the Srebrenica region for reburial in the Potocari cemetery.

The massacre took place just a few months before the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, which claimed some 100,000 lives in total.

Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic, considered masterminds of the massacre, are now being tried by a UN court for war crimes and genocide.


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