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Srebrenica victims remembered Monday

Some 50,000 survivors, guests and dignitaries gathered Monday at the site of Europe`s worst massacre of civilians since World War II to mark the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica slaughter and to bury the newly identified bodies of 610 victims.

On July 11, 1995, shortly before the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war (which erupted amongst the sectarian chaos of Yugoslavia`s breakup), the town`s Muslim population fled to a United Nations camp after Bosnian Serb soldiers overran the town of Srebrenica ? which was supposed to be a U.N.-protected zone. However, the Serb soldiers entered the camp and began a slaughter that ended with over 8,000 Muslims dead, most of them men and boys. Following the massacre, their bodies were dumped in mass graves throughout eastern Bosnia. Dutch U.N. troops stood by and did nothing to prevent the massacre, and the alleged masterminds of slaughter, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his commander of military forces, General Ratko Mladic, remain at large.

The sound of Muslim prayer echoed through the valley as family members wandered between the 610 caskets laid on the ground of the Memorial Center, ready to be buried.