Mass funeral for Srebrenica massacre victims

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims prayed for the dead in Srebrnica on Saturday, the 14th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II, and buried hundreds of victims recently recovered from mass graves.

From early morning, thousands of family members moved among the rows of coffins, looking for those of relatives before the 534 victims are laid to rest next to the existing 3,297 graves at the Srebrenica-Potocari memorial center.

Every few minutes, new buses of survivors and family members arrived to attend the commemoration of 8,100 Muslim men and boys who were killed in Srebrenica over several days in 1995 when Serb forces overran the town.

Every year, more victims' bodies are recovered from mass graves found in the area, identified through DNA analysis and buried. This year among the 534 victims, there are 44 teenagers. Four were 14 when they were killed.

Kadrija Muminagic arrived from Germany to bury his nephew Saidin, who was 14 when he and his father ended up at the execution field somewhere around Srebrenica. Saidin's 16 year-old brother Sulejman was killed by a shell that landed close to their home a week before Srebrenica fell. Only the mother survived the massacre. She died three years later.

"She died of sorrow," said Muminagic, who escaped the killing by hiding in the forest.

During the 1992-95 Bosnian war, the United Nations declared Srebrenica — which had been besieged by Serb forces throughout the war — a U.N.-protected safe area for civilians. A number Bosnians flocked there for protection.

But in July 1995, Serb troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the enclave. The outnumbered U.N. troops never fired a shot. They watched as Mladic's troops rounded up the population of Srebrenica and took the men away for execution.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, has ruled that the Srebrenica massacre was genocide. It has been described by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the darkest page in U.N. history.

Former Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, is on trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He claims he is not guilty for what happened. Mladic, also indicted for genocide, is still in hiding, apparently in Serbia. Belgrade has faced immense international pressure to arrest him.

Bosnia's international administrator, Austrian diplomat Valentin Incko, said the victims must not be forgotten because "this way we would kill them for a second time."