Bosnia sends off 50 more Srebrenica genocide victims to final rest

Bosnia sends off 50 more Srebrenica genocide victims to final rest
# 11 July 2022 20:45 (UTC +04:00)

The remains of 50 more victims of the Srebrenica genocide were sent on Friday for burial in the village of Potocari three days later on the 27th anniversary of the 1995 genocide, APA reports citing Anadolu Agency.

Hundreds of people have arrived in the capital Sarajevo and the nearby town of Visoko to bid a final farewell to the recently identified victims.

Every year on July 11, newly identified victims of the genocide are buried in a memorial cemetery in Potocari in the eastern part of the country.

After passing by Vogosca, a Sarajevo suburb, a truck carrying the coffins draped with a large flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina stopped in front of the presidency near a memorial for children killed in the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995.

Around 1,500 children were massacred during the brutal 1995 siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces.

State officials and Sarajevo residents laid flowers on the vehicles carrying the bodies and held prayers.

Husein Kavazovic, the grand mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, led people in prayers for the departed.

Head of the three-men presidency Sefik Dzaferovic, Croat member of the Council Zeljko Komsic, and Turkish Ambassador Sadik Babur Girgin were present at the ceremony.

Dzaferovic told the media that forgetting this event risks it happening again.

"We will not forget what happened for both the victims and ourselves, we will always remember and respect the victims," said Dzaferovic.

Emotional scenes were witnessed as the truck passed through the streets, with large crowds of people, including women and children, crying and praying for the victims.

The youngest of the victims to be buried this year was Salim Mustafic, who was 16 years old when he was killed, while Husejin Krdzic, 59 when killed, was the oldest genocide victim among this year's identified victims.

After Monday's burials in Potocari, the number of genocide victims laid to rest in the memorial cemetery will rise to 6,721.

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