Thousands of Muslims from across Bosnia gathered today to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.
The organisers said some 6,000 people converged in Potocari, the site of an unfinished memorial to the victims just outside Srebrenica, for a simple, solemn ceremony to honour the dead.
Police were present in force to prevent clashes, but the ceremony ended without incident.
"We pray for the sorrow to become hope, for revenge to become justice and for a mother's tear to become a reminder so that Srebrenica and New York will never happen again," Muslim cleric Mr Mustafa Ceric said during the prayer service referring to September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Ms Kada Hotic, a survivor of the 1995 massacre, was among those who attended the ceremony.
Ms Hotic's husband, son and two brothers were captured and killed by Bosnian Serbs, among more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims believed to have been massacred in the area on July 11, 1995.
At the time Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, was a UN-proclaimed "safe haven" under the guard of Dutch UN soldiers.
Ms Hotic's husband's body was among more than 6,000 that were exhumed from numerous mass graves around Srebrenica over the past seven years, and one of only 309 that have been identified.
Ms Razija Orbic, one of the few survivors who returned to live in Srebrenica, also attended the ceremony.
Her husband, father and father-in-law were among the Srebrenica Muslims who were summarily executed by troops under the command of Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic and his deputy Radislav Krstic.
Last year, Krstic became the first person to be convicted of genocide in Bosnia's war for helping to organise the Srebrenica executions, but the court noted that bigger fish behind the killings remained at large, notably Mladic and Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic.
AFP