Srebrenica victims reburied on anniversary
A Bosnian Muslim woman cries near one of the 613 coffins before a mass burrial ceremony at the Srebrenica Memorial Cemetary in Potocari on July 11, 2011.
Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims gathered Monday in Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, for a remembrance ceremony — 16 years after Bosnian Serb forces massacred 8000 Muslim men and boys.
Mourners took the occasion to rebury the remains of 613 victims that were recovered from mass graves and identified over the past 12 months.
Al Jazeera said the victims would be buried in Potocari, just north of Srebrenica, after a memorial service.
Complete skeletons were assembled by forensic experts and checked against the DNA from blood samples of survivors of the massacre, Al Jazeera reported.
The massacre is the worst atrocity to have taken place in Europe since World War II. Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, who is accused of ordering the killings, is on trial in The Hague after being arrested in May.
(Read more: How young Serbs learn to hate.)
On July 11, 1995, the Bosniaks were being guarded by Dutch U.N. peacekeepers in Srebrenica, when the town was attacked by Bosnian Serb forces.
The massacre is the only episode of the 1992-95 Bosnian war that international courts have called a genocide.
The deputy mayor of Srebrenica, Tchamil Durakovic, told the BBC that in order for future generations to be educated, those responsible for the massacre needed to be brought to justice.
The Bosnian war claimed 100,000 lives.
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