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Bosnia families bury victims of Srebrenica massacre

SREBRENICA (Bosnia): Thousands of relatives of 8,000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered in Bosnia in 1995 gathered on Monday to bury 600 victims of the Srebrenica atrocity, seen by many as Europe's worst since World War Two.

Women and men, part of a group of about 10,000, wept while lowering coffins draped in traditional Islamic green cloths into fresh graves in an eastern Bosnian field.

It is the final resting place for those who were killed by Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, despite the presence of UN peacekeepers.

The grave mounds, marked with green wooden panels bearing the names of the dead, covered a small section of a sprawling cemetery for all of Srebrenica's victims. It will become the biggest graveyard of Muslims killed in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Bosnian Serbs captured the enclave - which had been declared a UN "safe area" - in July 1995, as lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers stood by. A damning report last April prompted the entire Dutch cabinet to quit in delayed atonement for the peacekeepers' failure to prevent the massacre.

The graveyard lies near the site where Serb forces divided women from the men who were to be slaughtered.

Muslim men and women, normally separate at prayer, joined together on Monday.

A visibly shaken Hodzic Aza buried a son and a brother.

"Thank God that now I know where they are," she said after the burial. "I also hope to find my husband, another brother and father-in-law." All went missing after Srebrenica fell.

About 7,500 bags with the remains of victims of the atrocity have been exhumed from 60 mass graves, but only 850 have been identified by DNA analysis so far.

The top Muslim cleric in Bosnia, Mustafa Efendi Ceric, led the prayers, observed by dozens of officials and diplomats in the town, which is now part of post-war Bosnia's Serb Republic.

"May God forgive their sins and may we learn from Srebrenica so that others need not learn," Ceric said.

MOTHERS BURY 600 SONS

Almedina Dautbasic, whose parents were killed in violence in Srebrenica, thanked all who came on Monday to witness that "mothers have buried in only one day 600 sons killed by human hatred".

"Remembering your crime is our right and our pledge," Dautbasic said, addressing invisible executioners.

The top Western envoy in Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, read a letter from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who said the world body's failure to prevent the atrocity would "haunt our history forever".

"The United Nations remembers horrific events of Srebrenica with the deepest pain. This service ends the long period of waiting and of anguish and the beginning of an important stage in the process of healing for the entire region," Annan said.

He reiterated his calls for those responsible to be caught.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic have been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for the massacre. Both are at large.

Hundreds of Serb police, overseen by EU monitors and Nato peacekeepers, were deployed along the road and at the site of the burial.

Bosnia's central government declared March 31 a day of national mourning for the dead.

Three brothers from the Mujic family and a cousin were buried next to each other.

So were Hasima Spiovic and Semsudin Jugovic, a couple killed while holding each other close. Their bones had been found intertwined in a grave. Hasima, 22, was the only woman among those killed.-Reuters