Bosnia Buries 284 Bodies from Wartime Mass Grave

Thousands of people gathered to mourn as the remains of 284 people recently found in Tomasica at the biggest mass grave discovered since the 1992-95 war were buried.

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A Bosnian Muslim woman cries by the casket of a relative in the village of Kozarac. (Beta/AP Photo/Amel Emric)

Relatives of the dead gathered in the north-western town of Kozarac on Sunday to hold a commemoration before the burial of the bodies which were exhumed from the mass grave at Tomasica.

Coffins draped in green cloth which contained the bodies of the victims were laid out on a football pitch in Kozarac as people prayed for their loved ones, who are believed to have been killed during a Bosnian Serb ethnic cleansing campaign in 1992.

Twelve of the victims who were buried on Sunday were under 18, the youngest being a 13-year-old boy. One of those buried was a Croat while the rest were Bosniaks. Three were women.

“Genocide was committed here,” Bosnian Grand Mufti Husnija Kavazovic, told the thousands of people who gathered for the commemoration on Sunday, describing the killings as “evil”.

The head imam of the Islamic community in Kozarac, Amir Mahic, said that the families of the victims were still suffering humiliation and injustice.

“In this miracle country, a joy is when a mother finds some bone of her son or husband,” he said.

High Representative Valentin Inzko, the top international official in Bosnia, said meanwhile that those responsible must face justice.

“Lies and injustice do not have a future because only on the truth and justice can peace be built,” he said.

The mass grave at the Tomasica mines near the town of Prijedor was discovered last August following a tip-off from a Bosnian Serb soldier. So far the remains of more than 430 Bosniaks and Croats have been exhumed there.

The discovery of the grave has raised hopes that it could provide crucial evidence for new war crimes prosecutions.

More than 1,500 people were killed in 1992 in the Prijedor area, which was a wartime Bosnian Serb stronghold.

Former Bosnian Serb military and political leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic are on trial at the international court in The Hague for alleged genocide in Prijedor in 1992, amongst other charges.