BEIJING, July 12 -- Some 50 thousand survivors and world leaders gathered in at Potocari, near Srebrenica on Monday to mark the tenth anniversary of Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II.

   

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THEY came in their thousands to a muddy field in a remote corner of Bosnia to bury their dead and mark the tenth anniversary of Europe's worst post-Second World War atrocity. (Photo: Xinhua/REUTERS)

The massacre happened shortly before the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

    The town's population fled to the UN compound in nearby Potocari after Bosnian Serb soldiers overran Srebrenica - a UN-protected zone.

    But the Serb soldiers entered the camp and began a slaughter that left eight thousand Muslims dead - most of them men and boys.

    UN troops at the UN compound were accused of doing nothing to prevent the massacre.

    UN Secretary General Kofi Annan representative Mark Brown said at the ceremony the tragedy will haunt the UN forever.

    "We made serious errors of judgement in a philosophy of impartiality and non-violence which however admirable was unsuited to the conflict in Bosnia. That is also why I also wrote, the tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our, the UN history forever." he said.

    So far more than five-thousand bodies have been exhumed. Two thousand of them have been identified.

    A quarter of a million people were killed in the war which pitted Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats against each other.

    (Source: CRIENGLISH.com)

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