Thousands weep for massacre victims of Bosnia

A whole hillside was dug out with graves waiting for 775 coffins to be laid to rest at the biggest Srebrenica funeral so far.

That was fewer than a tenth of the total number of Muslim men and boys executed after Serb forces overran the UN-protected town on July 11, 1995, during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

At the time, some 30,000 Bosnian Muslims had flocked to the UN military base in the town's suburb of Potocari for refuge.

But when Serb forces came, outnumbered Dutch troops opened the gates. The Serbs separated out men and boys, putting them on trucks and carted them away, the vast majority never to be seen again.

The Srebrenica memorial centre now stands across the road from that former UN base. The bodies being buried were previously excavated from mass graves and identified through DNA tests.

An estimated 60,000 people were at the memorial yesterday. Relatives mingled among the pits on one side and rows of green coffins on the other, looking for the names of their loved ones. Muslim prayers and weeping mixed with speeches of dignitaries condemning the crimes and calling for the perpetrators to be punished.

Fifteen years later, no one represented the UN at the ceremony. Serbian President Boris Tadic was the first dignitary to arrive, saying he was coming in an "act of reconciliation. (I want to) build bridges of trust and understanding among the nations in the region," he said in Belgrade.

In Srebrenica, some in the crowd yelled "Bravo, Boris!" others asked "Where is Mladic?" – a reference to former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who led the Serb troops into Srebrenica. Mladic and former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic were indicted with genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal in 1995. Karadzic is now on trial at the tribunal in The Hague while Mladic is still a fugitive, presumably hiding in Serbia.

President Tadic said in a short statement that he "will do everything" to apprehend all war crimes suspects in Serbia.

The US ambassador to Bosnia, Charles English, read a message from President Barack Obama that urged "governments to redouble their efforts" and arrest those responsible for the war crimes at Srebrenica.

President Obama called the Srebrenica genocide a "stain on our collective consciousness" that occurred even after decades of pledges of "never again" after Nazi atrocities.

Bosnian Serbs sent no representatives to the ceremony. In a deliberate snub, Karadzic's Serb Democratic Party honoured him on Saturday at a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the party's founding.