409 massacre victims to be buried

Eighteen years after the massacre, a Bosnian woman searches for her relative among 409 newly identified Srebrenica victims. Photo / AP

Special ceremony honours those killed in Srebrenica genocide including newborn baby found in mass grave

Bosnia will today bury 409 victims of the Srebrenica massacre - among them a newborn baby - on the 18th anniversary of Europe's worst post-war atrocity in which Bosnian Serb forces slaughtered some 8000 Muslims.

Thousands of people were expected to attend a mass funeral of the victims whose remains were found in mass graves in the eastern Bosnian Srebrenica region and only identified almost two decades after the 1995 mass killing.

On the same day, the UN Yugoslav war crimes court was to rule on an appeal of the decision to drop a charge of genocide against Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, who faces other counts including masterminding the Srebrenica massacre.

"This year we are going to bury the youngest victim of the genocide, the Muhic family's baby" whose remains were exhumed from a mass grave last year, said Kenan Karavdic, who is in charge of the burial ceremony.

The baby, who died shortly after her birth in July 1995 at the UN base in Potocari, near Srebrenica, "will be buried next to the grave of her father Hajrudin, killed in a massacre", Karavcic said.

Ahead of the funeral services, columns of simple wooden coffins, covered with green cloth, were aligned in a vast hall as relatives were searching for their loved ones. At the cemetery in the memorial centre in Potocari, amid rows of white marble columns, were freshly dug graves with green wooden signs where the coffins were to be laid.

The remains of 5657 victims, identified through DNA tests, have already been buried in the memorial centre in Potocari since the process started a decade ago. Their remains - often only a handful of bones - were found in more than 300 mass graves in the area.

Death toll

8000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Srebrenica by Serb forces, an act the International Court of Justice called genocide.

100,000 Lives were lost in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

- AAP