The remains of more than 500 people killed as Serb forces overran the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 have been laid to rest.
The bodies, which had been removed from mass graves, were buried alongside nearly 3,300 other graves in the Srebrenica-Potocari memorial centre on Saturday.
Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims gathered for the ceremony held on the 14th anniversary of the slaughter of 8,100 men and boys at the hands of Serb forces.
The victims, aged between 14 and 72 when they were killed, were mostly recovered from secondary mass grave sites which they had been moved to in an attempt to cover up the murders.
"Although we were desperately searching for his remains for years, it was so hard to receive a telephone call telling us that my father had been identified," Nurveta Guster, a 27-year-old technician, said.
"I saw him for the last time at our house in Srebrenica. He left with other men through the woods trying to escape.
Mass graves
"It is just like it is happening now, I'm going through it again," said Guster, whose uncle and an 18-year-old nephew were also buried during Saturday's ceremony.
Every year, more bodies are found, identified through DNA analysis and reburied.
Hatidza Mehmedovic told the AFP news agency that she was still searching for her son's remains.
"Victims' families are still suffering as mass graves are still hidden," she said.
Although the ceremony attracted thousands of people, the atrocity is not officially commemorated in Bosnia, which is divided between two political entities, one of which, Republika Srpska, is dominated by Serbs.
'Better future'
On Wednesday, ethnic Serb deputies in the Bosnian parliament blocked a move to declare July 11 the Srebrenica genocide remembrance day.
The Bosnian war in the early 1990s took place against the background of instability across the former Yugoslavia.
No senior Serb officials were present at Saturday's event, but Boris Tadic, the president of neighbouring Serbia, said his government had an obligation to punish those responsible and was doing all it could to track down Ratko Mladic, the Serb military chief.
Tadic said all innocent victims must be respected "in order to create a better future for the Balkans, free of the war past".
Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader who is also accused of ordering the violence, was detained last year and is awaiting trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
Al Jazeera English - Europe - Bosnia buries 500 Srebrenica dead
Bosnia buries 500 Srebrenica dead -
11th July 2009
