the Srebrenica tragedy
On the 17th anniversary of the Srebrenica tragedy, about 30,000 people gathered for the reburials of 520 people in Potocari. Among those to be reburied on Wednesday are said to be 48 teenagers. Nearly 7,000 victims have been identified, but the search goes on.
Coffins containing the identified bodies of victims of the Srebrenica genocide are stored in the abandoned hall of a car battery factory in Potocari, Srebrenica Municipality, where the Dutch had a peacekeeping base that was overrun by Bosnian Muslim refugees after the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in May 1995. In July 1995, the refugees were handed over to the Serb Army and then divided women and children put on buses and then sent to Tuzla, and the men and older teenage boys were taken into the forests, shot and killed and put into mass graves. The Bosnian Serb troops had tried to hide the scale of the killings by digging up bodies from mass graves and dumping them in a number of the so-called secondary and tertiary mass graves.
A Bosnian Muslim woman prays near the coffin of a relative, among 520 newly identified Srebrenica victims, which are stored in the abandoned hall of a car battery factory in Potocari near Srebrenica. The bodies were transported from Visoko and stored during preparation for Sunday's funeral of newly identified bodies of Muslims.
Coffin of a 520 Srebrenica victim which are stored in the abandoned hall of a car battery factory in Potocari near Srebrenica. The 520 victims will be buried at a memorial center near Srebrenica on the 17th anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 men and boys, defined by the International Court of Justice as genocide.
A Bosnian Muslim woman prays near the coffin of a relative, among 520 newly identified Srebrenica victims, in the abandoned hall of a car battery factory in Potocari near Srebrenica.
Shadow of a man standing next to the coffin of a relative, among 520 newly identified Srebrenica victims, at the Potocari memorial cemetery near Srebrenica, some 160 kilometers east of Sarajevo.
A Bosnian Muslim man kneels down and pray as he touch the coffin of a relative, among 520 newly identified Srebrenica victims, in the abandoned hall of a car battery factory in Potocari near Srebrenica.
A Bosnian Muslim woman touch the coffin of a relative, 520 newly identified Srebrenica victims are stored in the abandoned hall of a car battery factory in Potocari near Srebrenica.
A Bosnian Muslim woman searches for a coffin of her relative, among the 520 newly identified Srebrenica victims which are stored in the abandoned hall of a car battery factory in Potocari near Srebrenica.
View from the abandoned halls showing the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the place where they will be buried victims of the Srebrenica massacre. After prayers, the coffins were passed overhead through the crowd before being lowered into the freshly dug graves.