10 years later, Srebrenica victims buried

SREBRENICA, Bosnia – Relatives wept over coffins of victims of the Srebrenica massacre, dug out of death pits at a ceremony yesterday to mark the 10th anniversary of Europe’s worst atrocity in 50 years.

Women in white headscarves displayed their grief as they touched some of the 610 green-draped coffins lined up under a grey sky at the cemetery, now a muddy field after an overnight storm. The coffins contained the latest identified remains found in mass graves dug by Bosnian Serb forces to hide their slaughter of 8 000 Muslim men between July 11 and July 18, 1995.Islamic prayers rang out from loudspeakers as thousands made their way to the memorial.Mourners looked at the wooden markers for the grave of their fathers, husbands or sons.Hajrija Mujic, 36, came to bury her father-in-law.Her husband’s remains were identified too late for burial today.”Our pain continues, every year we come to bury someone else,” said Mujic, weeping.”I am sick of all this.”Up to 50 000 mourners were expected at the noon memorial, among them former US Balkans envoy Richard Holbrooke who brokered the Dayton accord that brought Bosnia an uneasy peace.Some 1 500 Bosnian Serb policemen were positioned around the complex to enforce security, heightened by the discovery of two large bombs near the site last week.The massacre, in the final two months of a 43-month war, aimed to ensure there were no Muslims to fight back or reclaim Serb-occupied land or homes in the future.Bosnian Serb army commander General Ratko Mladic and the rebel state’s “president”, Radovan Karadzic, were indicted for genocide for the atrocity.But to the anger of Bosnians and the embarrassment of Western powers who intervened belatedly to stop the war which claimed 200 000 lives, both remain at large.Yesterday’s funerals raised the number of Srebrenica graves at the Potocari cemetery to about 2 000.There are 7 000 more body bags with partial remains still awaiting DNA analysis.Some 20 mass graves are still to be exhumed.- Nampa-ReutersThe coffins contained the latest identified remains found in mass graves dug by Bosnian Serb forces to hide their slaughter of 8 000 Muslim men between July 11 and July 18, 1995.Islamic prayers rang out from loudspeakers as thousands made their way to the memorial.Mourners looked at the wooden markers for the grave of their fathers, husbands or sons.Hajrija Mujic, 36, came to bury her father-in-law.Her husband’s remains were identified too late for burial today.”Our pain continues, every year we come to bury someone else,” said Mujic, weeping.”I am sick of all this.”Up to 50 000 mourners were expected at the noon memorial, among them former US Balkans envoy Richard Holbrooke who brokered the Dayton accord that brought Bosnia an uneasy peace.Some 1 500 Bosnian Serb policemen were positioned around the complex to enforce security, heightened by the discovery of two large bombs near the site last week.The massacre, in the final two months of a 43-month war, aimed to ensure there were no Muslims to fight back or reclaim Serb-occupied land or homes in the future.Bosnian Serb army commander General Ratko Mladic and the rebel state’s “president”, Radovan Karadzic, were indicted for genocide for the atrocity.But to the anger of Bosnians and the embarrassment of Western powers who intervened belatedly to stop the war which claimed 200 000 lives, both remain at large.Yesterday’s funerals raised the number of Srebrenica graves at the Potocari cemetery to about 2 000.There are 7 000 more body bags with partial remains still awaiting DNA analysis.Some 20 mass graves are still to be exhumed.- Nampa-Reuters