Hundreds of victims of Srebrenica massacre buried

Bereaved families and survivors came to bury hundreds of victims of the Srebrenica massacre yesterday as world leaders demanded the arrest of the general whose troops killed the 8,000 Muslim males 15 years ago.

Tens of thousands of people, including European leaders, gathered near 775 green-covered coffins on the anniversary of the worst single atrocity on European soil since World War II.

"We recognise that there can be no lasting peace without justice," US President Barack Obama said in a speech read out at the Potocari graveyard near the town of Srebrenica.

This meant the "prosecution and punishment of those who carried out the genocide," he said. "This includes Ratko Mladic who presided over the killings and remains at large."

Mr Mladic, Bosnian Serb army chief during the 1992-1995 war, has been in hiding for almost 15 years and believed to be in Serbia.

He has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in the darkest episode in the violent break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Bosnian Security Minister Sadik Ahmetovic urged the international community "to contribute so that Ratko Mladic is brought to justice... the man who brought us our suffering".

"It is the least Europe could do," Mr Ahmetovic, himself a survivor of Srebrenica massacre, told the crowd.

Also at the commemoration were Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and the presidents of all the former Yugoslavia's republics.

The ceremony was followed by the burial of the 775 recently identified victims, the youngest two boys aged 14, alongside 3,749 bodies already in the Potocari graveyard.

The victims were shot and dumped in mass graves, then reburied haphazardly in more than 70 sites in a bid to cover up the evidence.

Bones exhumed by forensic experts over the past few years were reburied in Potocari after identification through DNA testing.

While the remains of nearly 6,500 people have been identified, some found in more than one grave, many families are holding off burial in the hope that more body parts, or those of another relative, will turn up.

Ramiza Gurdic, 57, buried her son Mehrudin who had not yet turned 17 when he was killed. Her husband and another son are already in the immense graveyard.

"How can you forget, how can you forgive? I think about them every day. I wonder if they were hungry, thirsty," she said ahead of the ceremony.

"I go to bed with the pain and I wake up with the sadness," she said.

The Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in the days following the fall of the Srebrenica enclave, designated a UN safe area, to Bosnian Serb troops on July 11, 1995.

"The horror of Srebrenica was a stain on our collective conscience," Obama's speech said, admitting the failure of international community to protect the enclave.

The victims "were people who sought to live in peace and had relied on the promise of international protection, but in the hour of greatest need they were left to fend for themselves," Mr Obama said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron echoed in a statement that "it was a crime that shamed Europe."

Serbian President Boris Tadic's presence at the ceremony was a sore point for many survivors with the fugitive Mladic believed to be hiding in Serbia.