Srebrenica buries its victims 10 years on

FAMILIES buried the skeletal remains of Srebrenica victims yesterday at the 10th anniversary of the massacre, while the West acknowledged its failure to prevent Europe’s worst atrocity in 50 years.

Thousands of men formed long rows, passing the 610 green-draped coffins one by one above their heads to freshly-dug graves where women in white headscarves waited by wooden markers, many weeping or silently praying.

Each narrow, cylindrical box was tagged with a number and a name. Each was light, containing only bones painstakingly identified by DNA analysis. Each family buried its own, shifting the sodden earth with shovels, buckets or by hand.