Thousands gather to bury 600 Srebrenica victims
Thousands of weeping relatives today gathered to lay to rest the first identified victims of Europe’s worst civilian massacre since the Second World War.
About 15,000 mourners mingled among 600 caskets containing the remains of Muslim men and boys slaughtered by the Bosnian Serbs in July 1995.
Up to 8,000 Muslims were executed in the eastern Bosnian enclave.
They were buried in a newly established graveyard in Potocari, a village next to Srebrenica where the town’s men were last seen by their families.
“That day, the Earth and the sky were burning,” said Mirsada Stocevic, 27, describing how Serb troops separated her and her 15-month-old son Mujo from her husband Mustafa.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry about me. Take care of the child.’ Then they took him away and I never saw him again,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I came to see where their graves are,” said Mujo, now nine. “I don’t remember him, but I’d like to touch the casket once we find it.”
Security was tight for today’s funeral, with Nato helicopters patrolling the skies and 1,800 police officers and alliance peacekeepers deployed in the area.
The government declared a national day of mourning, and the ceremony was televised across Bosnia.
US Ambassador Clifford Bond and Lord Ashdown, Bosnia’s top international administrator, helped lower caskets into graves and cover them with soil.
The victims had sought protection in the UN compound in Potocari, but the vastly outnumbered and lightly armed Dutch UN peacekeepers in charge of the area were no match for the Serb forces intent on purging the town of its Muslims.
More than 5,000 bodies since have been exhumed from mass graves. The 600 sets of remains reburied today were identified using DNA analysis.
Many of the perpetrators remain at large, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime military chief, Gen Ratko Mladic, who personally led the Serb forces at Srebrenica.
