Bosnian Muslims mark 1995 massacre of thousands with burials

Thousands of mourners gathered Thursday to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II, as Serbian officials continued to dispute that genocide was committed in the eastern Bosnian enclave. Relatives of the more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb troops […]

Thousands of mourners gathered Thursday to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II, as Serbian officials continued to dispute that genocide was committed in the eastern Bosnian enclave.

Relatives of the more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb troops were among those attending a ceremony at a memorial site that included the burial of 33 newly identified victims of the killings that took place July 11-22, 1995.

More than 1,000 are still considered missing from the mass slaughter during the Bosnian civil war.

Many victims were ambushed along forest routes while fleeing Srebrenica in scorching heat without food or water. They were either shot on the spot, or taken to collective centers where they were executed and thrown into mass graves Mevlid Halilovic, a relative of a victim, said many of the people who carried out the massacre were still at large.

“Those who did this (killing) have to be punished,” he said. “And it was all done by our (Serb) neighbors, those who live just around here.”

Nura Begovic was burying the remains of her brother, who was identified through his hand bone.

“I spent 24 years looking for his body and I only found one bone,” she said. “But today, both I and my family have found peace.”

Both Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Ratko Mladic, who led troops that captured Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, were sentenced by a U.N. war crimes court to life in prison.