Bosnian Serb police found two large bombs today near the memorial centre for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where thousands of people are due to gather next week to remember the killings.
"It was ready to detonate. All you needed to do was light a slow-burning fuse and walk away," a police spokesman said. "Experts told me it would have been a hug destructive force." The bombs contained 35 kilograms of explosives.
Tens of thousands of family members, foreign dignitaries and guests are expected to attend a ceremony on July 11th marking the 10th anniversary of the massacre.
Nearly 600 identified victims will be buried at the Potocari memorial centre.
The spokesman said the police, acting on an overnight tip from European Union peacekeepers, found the explosives this morning in two locations inside a former concrete factory near the memorial centre.
"We are working on identifying and arresting the culprits," he said.
Despite the admission of guilt for the massacre by the government of Bosnia's Serb Republic, many Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia have continued questioning and downplaying the crime in which Serb forces killed up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
The massacre came in the final two months of the Bosnia war, when Serb forces brushed aside a thin UN force guarding Muslims in the "safe area" of Srebrenica.
They led the men away and killed them on an industrial scale over the next seven days.
The day after the Srebrenica massacre commemoration, Serbs in the neighbouring town of Bratunac will unveil a monument to what they say are more than 3,000 Serb victims in the region, which is in the east of the Serb Republic and borders Serbia.
Srebrenica, mainly Muslim before the 1992-95 war, now has a Serb majority. Some Muslims have returned to the town, and local officials say the security situation has been satisfactory.