AFP, SREBRENICA: Twenty-one years after they were killed in Europe’s worst massacre since World War II, the remains of 127 people will finally be laid to rest Monday in Srebrenica.
The youngest, Avdija Memic, was just 14 when Bosnian Serb forces in the Bosnian town killed 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995, five months before the end of the country’s inter-ethnic war. The oldest, Mustafa Hadzovic was 77.
The 127 coffins—containing remains of the most-recently identified victims, including a dozen who were under 18 when they were killed—will be buried at a memorial site after a service attended by several thousand people. On Monday morning, victims’ families headed towards the coffins wrapped in green cloth at the memorial centre.
Widows and daughters wept as men tried to comfort them. Many mourners knelt next to the coffins. Some caressed the cloth coverings, or placed flowers, or said prayers.
Other mourners waited near the freshly dug graves where the remains of their loved ones will be laid to rest after a prayer read by Bosnia’s grand mufti, Husein Kavazovic.