BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA : Bodies of 33 Bosnian Muslims killed during Bosnian War, buried after DNA identification

Record ID: 864070

  • Title: BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA : Bodies of 33 Bosnian Muslims killed during Bosnian War, buried after DNA identification
  • Date: 13th May 2009
  • Summary: NIJAZ SALIHOVIC WHO CAME TO BURY HIS NIECE WHO WAS SIX MONTHS OLD WHEN SHE WAS KILLED, TALKING
  • Embargoed: 28th May 2009 13:00
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  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,War / Fighting
  • Reuters ID: LVAER0ZX1LCWRWFJ9S2YFBI772PY
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  • Story Text: Bosnian Muslims gathered on Tuesday (May 12) in the town of Bratunac to bury the remains of 33 Bosnian Muslims killed early in the Bosnian war including its oldest victim, a 110-year-old woman.
    Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 600 Muslims in Bratunac during the 1992-1995 war and each May, relatives visit the town to commemorate the killings and bury those who were found in mass graves and identified.
    Nijaz Salihovic came to bury his six-month-old niece Narcisa, who was killed in May 1992 with her mother, father and one-year-older sister.

    "Her mother's remains have been found but we are still looking for her father's body. The other child has been found but the process of identification is not completed yet," he said.
    Zahida Suljagic is the oldest victim exhumed so far. Born in 1882, Suljagic was killed in her house in Bratunac in May 1992 while other family members were taken and detained.

    "They took my brother and his wife with them, they took others as well, but two of them they killed at the spot," said Himzo Sirucic, a relative.
    With the funeral on Tuesday, the number of graves at a joint cemetery reaches 170.
    Fatima Sumcic came to Bratunac from Germany to bury her father who was among those killed in May 1992.

    "Thanks dear God that they found his body because there are so many of those who haven't been found yet. At least we will know a place where we can come in the future," she said.
    Bratunac is located in eastern Bosnia, where the largest number of the Bosnian Muslims were persecuted and killed in the Bosnian Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing in the 1990's, which aimed to create pure Serb territories in Bosnia.
    The worst example of such killings was the massacre of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in nearby Srebrenica, seen as Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.
    Some 100,000 people were killed in the Bosnian war, most of them Bosnian Muslims.
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