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Bosnians pay homage to newly-identified Srebrenica victims

Muslim women cry near the coffins of their relatives, who have been newly identified as victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 9, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)

Hundreds of people in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina have paid tribute to 127 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre whose bodies have recently been retrieved from mass graves.

Crowds of people laid flowers and recited prayers at the presidency building in Sarajevo, where trucks carrying the bodies of the victims had made a stop.

The victims will be buried at the memorial site in Srebrenica on Monday, on the 21st anniversary of the mass killing.

According to Lejla Cengic, a spokeswoman for the Bosnian institute of missing persons, some 6,300 victims are currently buried at the memorial site and 230 in other cemeteries.

Women place flowers on a truck carrying the coffins of newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in front of the presidential building in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 9, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)

In July 1995, Serbian death squads butchered over 8,000 Muslim Bosnian boys and men in Srebrenica in a few days, in the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

The carnage took place after Bosnian Serbs ran over the Bosnian town, even though it was formally declared a UN-protected area.

Munevera Bogilovic, a Bosnian Muslim, said, “This year, it is even sadder. I have already buried my husband, my brother, my brother-in-law and my uncle,” all killed in Srebrenica.

Radovan Karadzic (L), a former Bosnian Serb political leader, and Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic (file photo)

In March, former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted of war crimes for his role in the Srebrenica killings, considered genocide by the UN-backed criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic is still on trial in The Hague for war crimes and genocide at Srebrenica.


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