BOSNIA: About 15,000 Bosnians gathered yesterday to bury 282 Muslim men and boys killed in the Srebrenica massacre eight years after Europe's worst atrocity since the second World War.
For the first time, a Bosnian Serb government delegation attended the religious ceremony to mark the anniversary in an eastern Bosnian field near where Serb soldiers divided Muslim women from the men who were to be slaughtered.
"I came here because I regard it to be my moral duty," said Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Mr Dragan Mikerevic in remarks certain to be welcomed by Western officials seeking to foster reconciliation in the still ethnically divided country.
Each coffin held bones dug up from dozens of mass graves, including the remains of two 14-year-old boys.
Women wept as the coffins, draped in traditional Islamic green fabric, were lowered into fresh graves alongside 600 victims buried in March.
The graveyard will become the biggest burial place of Muslims killed in the 1992-95 war.
Family members came from across Bosnia and from abroad to bid farewell to their husbands, sons and fathers. "Let me see my sunshine for the last time," cried the mother of Safet Salihovic as relatives prevented her from going down into her son's grave before the coffin was covered with earth. He was buried next to his cousin.
In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces captured the predominantly Muslim town, which had been declared a United Nations "safe area", and went on to kill up to 8,000 Muslims. - (Reuters)