Srebrenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina), 11 July (LaPresse/AP) – Thousands of people from Bosnia and around the world are gathering in Srebrenica to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1995 massacre, when more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in Srebrenica. This has been recognised as the only genocide in Europe since the Holocaust. Seven recently identified victims of the massacre, including two 19-year-old men, will be buried today in a mass funeral in the vast, ever-expanding cemetery near Srebrenica, alongside the more than 6,000 victims already buried there. These funerals are held every year for victims who are gradually exhumed from dozens of mass graves around the city. Relatives of the victims are often only able to bury partial remains of their loved ones, as the bodies are often found in different mass graves, sometimes kilometres apart. This is the case, for example, of Mirzeta Karic, who was waiting to bury her father. ‘Thirty years of searching and we are burying a bone,’ she said, crying beside her father's coffin, wrapped in a green cloth according to Islamic tradition. ‘I think it would be easier for me if I could bury his whole body. What can I tell you, my father is one of 50 (killed) in my family.’
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