http://www.ibtimes.co.

uk/srebrenica-massacre-20th-anniversary-europes-worst-
atrocity-since-nazis-photo-report-1509885

Srebrenica massacre 20th anniversary:

Europe's worst atrocity since the Nazis
[Photo report]
By David Sim

July 8, 2015 12:20 BST

It is 20 years since the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. In
July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern
Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, a designated United Nations "safe haven". About 15,000 men
and boys managed to escape and fled through the woods, but many were murdered by the
Serbian army who ambushed them, disguised as UN soldiers.

War had broken out in Bosnia in April 1992. The Bosnian Serb army swept eastwards.
Srebrenica, a town of 36,000 where Muslims made up 75 percent of the population, was taken
over by Serb troops but Muslims regained it after several weeks.

Early in 1993, Serbs started an offensive on Muslim-held areas. Srebrenica and Zepa became
isolated enclaves deep in Serb-held territory. Muslims from the area flocked to Srebrenica and
the population swelled to 60,000. They had little food, water or medical supplies.
31 March 1993: Bosnian Muslim refugees are transported on a United Nations truck in a
convoy as they flee the Serb-besieged enclave of Srebrenica for TuzlaPascal Guyot/AFP

31 March 1993: Muslim women and children eat snow in order to quench their thirst as they
are evacuated from SrebrenicaReuters

In April, Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde in eastern Bosnia were declared three of six UN "safe
areas". The United Nations Protection Force deployed troops and the Serb attacks stopped.
But the town remained isolated and only a few humanitarian convoys reached it in the
following two years.

Then Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic ordered that Srebrenica and Zepa be entirely
cut off and aid convoys be stopped from reaching the towns.
5 August 1993: Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb military commander, whispers into the ear of
Radovan Karadzic,
leader of the Serb-run part of BosniaAFP

31 May 1993: Heavily-armed Bosnian Serb soldiers patrol through a field near the town of
SrebrenicaReuters
28 February 1994: Dutch soldiers accompany a UN convoy of armoured vehicles on their way
to Lukavac and SrebrenicaAFP

On 9 July 1995, Karadzic issued a new order to conquer Srebrenica. Troops surrounded the
enclave and attacked the observation posts of Dutch peacekeepers, taking about 30 soldiers
hostage.

The following day, Serbian forces started shelling Srebrenica. The Dutch threatened the Serbs
with Nato air strikes if they did not withdraw by morning.

Another day later, Nato planes bombed Serb tanks outside Srebrenica. The Serbs threatened to
resume shelling and kill the captured Dutch soldiers. Air strikes stopped and in the evening of
11 July, Bosnian Serb commander General Ratko Mladic entered Srebrenica.

An estimated 30,000 Muslim refugees packed around the Dutch peacekeeping base in
Potocari, just north of Srebrenica, after Bosnian Serb forces seized the "safe area". Mladic
sought to calm them, telling the crowd they did not have to be afraid.
12 July 1995: Bosnian Serb army Commander General Ratko Mladic hands out drinks to
Bosnian Muslim refugees from Srebrenica, as they wait to be

transported from Potocari to KladanjReuters

12 July 1995: A Bosnian Muslim man helps his elderly cousin as they wait to be transported
from Potocari to KladanjReuters

13 July
1995: A Bosnian Serb soldier fires a machine gun during a mopping-up operation near
SrebrenicaReuters
13 July 1995: Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic shakes hands with one of his soldiers
in Srebenica after they took control of the townReuters

Bosnian Serb forces put the frightened refugees on to buses to leave. Many of the refugees
were evacuated to Kladanj, 50km (30 miles) away on the edge of government-held territory.

The UN noticed that most of the refugees arriving from Srebrenica were women, children,
and the elderly, and became concerned about the fate of the men.
12 July 1995: Bosnian Muslim women and children wait for transportation from Potocari to
KladanjReuters
14 July 1995: Thousands of refugees from Srebrenica board buses at a camp outside the UN
base at Tuzla AirportReuters

13 July 1995: Bosnian Muslim refugees from Srebrenica are transported by the UN from
Potocari to KladanjReuters

14 July 1995: Bosnian women and children, refugees from Srebrenica, mourn their missing
men in the refugee camp at Tuzla AirportReuters
Over the week that followed the fall of Srebrenica, a total of about 8,000 men and boys from
the enclave are estimated to have been killed by Bosnian Serb forces in detention or while
trying to flee through the woods.

Men were crammed into warehouses, schools and barns in the area outside Srebrenica.They
were shot and buried in mass graves.

Video footage shows members of a paramilitary group called the Scorpions taking six
emaciated young men out of a truck with their hands tied behind their backs. They are led to a
clearing where four are seen being shot at close rangeHague Tribunal/Reuters

Bullet holes pepper a wall where Bosnian Muslims were executed at an agricultural
cooperative in Kravica near BratunacDado Ruvic/Reuters
18 September 1996: Forensic experts investigate bodies, many of them blindfolded and with
their hands tied around their backs, in a mass grave outside the village of PilicaOdd
Andersen/AFP

24 July 1996: The bodies of Muslims killed during the exodus from Srebrenica are seen in a
grave near the eastern Bosnian village of Nova KasabaReuters
28 March 1997: Stacks of unidentified corpses found in mass graves line the walls of an
underground shelter at a morgue in TuzlaReuters

Identification of the bodies is difficult: bodies were broken up by excavators that bulldozed
them into mass graves. Bodies were also moved from the original graves to secondary
locations to conceal the crime.

Forensic experts painstakingly work through what is left of the bodies found in the hundreds
of mass graves that have been discovered in the area.

Every year on 11 July, the remains of those who have been identified over the past year are
buried at the Memorial Centre in Potocari.
10 July 2001: A forensic expert works in a morgue in Tuzla containing the remains of more
than 3,500 Bosnian Muslim victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacreReuters
8 June 2005: Forensic experts sort through bones and body parts found in a mass grave in the
village of LipljeReuters

7 July 2005: A forensic expert with the International Commission on Missing Persons holds a
photograph found on the remains of a victim of the 1995 Srebrenica massacreDamir
Sagolj/Reuters
7 July 2005: Personal items found in a mass grave are laid out for identification at the office
of the International Commission on Missing Persons in TuzlaDamir Sagolj/Reuters

9 July 2005: A Bosnian Muslim woman looks through the window of a car as she waits for
610 coffins containing the remains of victims of the Srebrenica massacre to arrive in
PotocariDamir Sagolj/Reuters

9 July 2005: Men search for their relatives among coffins containing the remains of 610
Bosnian Muslims due to be laid to rest in a memorial cemetery in PotocariJoe Klamar/AFP
11 July 2005: Thousands attend the burial ceremony of 610 Bosnian Muslims at the memorial
cemetery in Potocari on the 10th anniversary of the massacreJoe Klamar/AFP

11 July 2005: Bosnian Muslim women cry as their relative is buried in PotocariDamir
Sagolj/Reuters

After the war, Karadzic went on the run and remained a fugitive for 13 years until he was
arrested in Belgrade in 2008. He had evaded the authorities by working as an alternative
medicine practitioner in a private clinic under the false name of Dragan David Dabic.
Mladic managed to evade justice with the help of Serbian army comrades and the Serbian
state. He was finally arrested in 2011 after the election of reformist president Boris Tadic.
Both Karadzic and Mladic are still standing trial at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in
The Hague.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader is pictured in 2008 and in 1995. The fugitive was arrested in a
suburb of Belgrade where he lived posing as a doctor of alternative medicine, sporting long
hair, a beard and glassesReuters
Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic in seen after his arrest in 2011Reuters

Twenty years on, the forests and farmland around Srebrenica are still yielding bones, but more
than 1,000 victims have yet to be found.

Bodies were tossed into pits then dug up months later and scattered in smaller graves by
Bosnian Serb forces trying to conceal the crime. Investigators believe at least one more big
grave still eludes them.

1 July 2015: Top row: Curana Zukanovic and a photo of her sons Jusa and Hajrudin, who are
still missing 20 years after the massacre. "I pray to dear Allah every day and hope not to die
without finding my children," she says. Bottom row: Nura Sulic and a photo of her son
Mirsad, also still missing. She says: "His photograph is all I have left of him. I pray to dear
Allah to find at least one, smallest bone. Anything. So that we would both finally be at
peace."Dado Ruvic/Reuters
More about the Srebrenica massacre

Srebrenica massacre: More than 100 newly-identified bodies will be laid to rest

Bosnia: UK and Russia locked in dispute over Srebrenica 'genocide' resolution

Radovan Karadzic: UN Prosecutors Demand Life in Prison for 'Butcher of Bosnia'

Killing Bosnia's Ghosts: Fighting to Remember the Balkan War Genocide