Burials Mark Anniversary of ’95 Bosnian Massacre

Survivors wept over long rows of coffins Friday as they buried the newly identified bodies of 282 victims to mark the eighth anniversary of a massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims.

The slayings of the men and boys in Srebrenica at the hands of Bosnian Serbs have come to symbolize Bosnia’s devastating 3 1/2-year war.

But Friday’s ceremony, held under heavy security in this bleak corner of eastern Bosnia, held signs of hope that the ethnically divided nation may find the will to heal: For the first time, the prime minister of the Bosnian Serb republic was among mourners.

“The time has come to talk about everything that happened in this area,” the official, Dragan Mikerevic, told about 20,000 people who gathered at a field on the outskirts of town where Bosnian Serb forces had separated the victims from their wives, mothers and sisters. The Serb soldiers hauled the men and boys away, forced them to strip and shot them one by one.

The slaughter at Srebrenica, at the time a U.N.-protected zone, began July 11, 1995, shortly before the end of the war. The victims’ bodies were dumped in mass graves throughout eastern Bosnia.

Forensics experts have exhumed more than 5,000 bodies, 1,620 of which have been identified.

On Friday, 282 identified bodies were laid to rest at a new Srebrenica cemetery dedicated to the victims. The remains of the first 600 people identified were buried there earlier this year, and several hundred more are to be buried this fall.

In New York, the United Nations Security Council decided Friday to keep a peacekeeping force led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for another year in Bosnia and demanded that those indicted for war crimes during the Bosnian conflict be handed over for prosecution.

An international peacekeeping force of 60,000 soldiers was sent to Bosnia in 1996 to maintain stability after the 1992-95 conflict. The force is now led by NATO and has 13,000 troops.