Thousands of Bosnian Serbs mourned their dead from the 1990s Srebrenica clashes yesterday, a day after their Bosnian Muslim wartime enemies marked the 10th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II.
Serbs claim that more than 3,000 of their own died in clashes with Srebrenica Muslims during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, though the Serb death toll was never independently documented.
The church services yesterday, attended by thousands of Bosnian Serbs in hamlets in eastern Bosnia, apparently were designed to counter massive ceremonies held Monday to commemorate the July 11, 1995, massacre by Bosnian Serb troops of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.
Bosnian Serbs say they overran Srebrenica in 1995 in a revenge attack for earlier Srebrenica Muslim offensives on surrounding Serbian villages that left hundreds of Bosnian Serbs dead.
The head of Serbia's influential Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, sent a message of condolence to both Serbs and Muslims in Srebrenica, and said the commemorations should not be held separately, as they could trigger new divisions and another "chain of bloodletting."
On Monday, some 30,000 Srebrenica survivors, guests and dignitaries paid respects at the site of the 1995 Bosnian Serb offensive, where thousands of Bosnian Muslims were executed and dumped into shallow graves near Srebrenica that continue to be discovered a decade later.
The sound of Muslim prayer echoed through loudspeakers across a sprawling green valley, as family members wandered among the 610 caskets of the most recently identified victims. They were buried beside 1,330 existing graves at a memorial cemetery.
No foreign officials attended the Serb commemorations yesterday, despite invitations, said Milos Milovanovic, the head of a Bosnian Serb war veterans' organization. The most prominent guests included the leaders of the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party, whose paramilitaries fought the Muslims in Bosnia.
Serbia only recently confronted the horrors of Srebrenica, after a videotape showing Serb paramilitaries executing six Bosnian Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica was broadcast locally.
Serbian pro-democratic President Boris Tadic attended the Bosnian Muslim services on Monday -- a significant gesture given Serbia's wartime backing of the Bosnian Serbs. He was not present at the Serb commemorations yesterday, sending his envoy instead.
Some 250,000 people in total were killed in the 1992-1995 war between Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs. About 16,500 bodies have been exhumed from more than 300 mass graves.
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