Thousands of locals and international guests are marking the 22nd anniversary of the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnia-Herzegovina town of Srebrenica.
At a solemn religious ceremony at the Potocari Memorial on July 11, the remains of 71 victims were interred, joining the 6,500 others who have already been identified and buried there.
The victims were executed by Bosnian-Serb forces who overran the town in July 1995 during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. It was the worst act of genocide in Europe since the end of World War II.
Srebrenica had been declared a UN safe zone, but it was only protected by a small number of lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers who were unable to defend the civilians who had sheltered there.
European Union foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn issued a joint statement on July 11 saying "the values so dramatically violated 22 years ago -- such as respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality -- are now at the core of [EU] engagement with Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens on the country's EU integration path."
Ahead of the events, several thousand people marched across Bosnia to the memorial site to honor the victims and as a gesture of reconciliation.
There were small demonstrations elsewhere, including several dozen people who gathered in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, under a banner reading: "Srebrenica, the conscience of the world."
