BOSNIA-SREBRENICA VICTIMS Bodies of Srebrenica victims depart for resting place

Record ID: 147774

  • Title: BOSNIA-SREBRENICA VICTIMS Bodies of Srebrenica victims depart for resting place
  • Date: 9th July 2015
  • Summary: VISOKO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (JULY 9, 2015) (REUTERS) PEOPLE AND RELATIVES OF SREBRENICA MASSACRE VICTIMS LOOKING AT TRUCK SET TO DEPART CARRYING REMAINS OF 136 BODIES, WHICH INCLUDE 18 BODIES OF 16-YEAR-OLDS WOMAN WHO IS BURYING HER BROTHER, ZIJADA HAJDAREVIC VARIOUS OF FAMILY MEMBERS MOURNING VARIOUS OF WOMAN ATTACHING FLOWERS TO TRUCK CARRYING REMAINS WOMAN IN PURPLE
  • Embargoed: 24th July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA1SKXUWTBJ0KYYQXP0DRLLBLTZ
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Hundreds of people paid their last respects to Srebrenica victims on Thursday (July 9) as 136 recently identified remains were moved from a morgue in Visoko for burial in Potocari.
    18 were identified by forensic pathologists as belonging to minors killed at the age of 16, bringing the total number of underage victims of the massacre to 440. Bodies are still being recovered in the mountains and forests surrounding what was a United Nations enclave during the Bosnian war.
    On Saturday (July 11), Bosnia marks the 20th anniversary of Europe's worst mass killing since World War Two - the slaughter of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces during five July days in 1995.
    Zijada Hajdarevic is one of the thousands of women left alive after Bosnian Serb forces picked the male population of Srebrenica for execution after Dutch U.N. peacekeepers abandoned the 'safe haven' of Srebrenica to Mladic on July 11, 1995.
    "I never found my father, I buried my grandfather, my husband's brothers, their children, my sister's husband..." she said.
    The forests and farmland around Srebrenica are still yielding bones; over 1,000 victims are missing, tossed into pits then dug up months later and scattered in smaller graves by Bosnian Serb forces trying to conceal the crime.
    Investigators believe at least one more big grave eludes them, while the accused architects - Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Ratko Mladic - are still standing trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, fiercely unrepentant.
    As such, Srebrenica remains an open wound, the lack of closure a dark shadow over Bosnia, where many Serbs still dispute what went on.
    For Muslim Bosniaks, Srebrenica has become a symbol of collective suffering. Serbs see it as a stick for the world to beat them with; many dispute the death toll and deny it was genocide, as the U.N. tribunal has ruled.
    Milorad Dodik, president of Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic, last month called the massacre "the greatest deception of the 20th century".
    In Sarajevo hundreds came to greet the truck as it arrived on its way to Potocari, where the remains will be interred beneath white marble headstones at Saturday's ceremonies.
    Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic announced that he would attend the anniversary commemoration.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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