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Kosovo Security Force members carry the coffins during the burial ceremony in Rezalle. Photo:Beta/AP/Visar Kryeziu.

The ceremony on Sunday also marked the 16th anniversary of the killings of dozens Kosovo Albanians by Serbian forces during 1999 Kosovo war in the village of Rezalle in the north Kosovo area of Drenica.

“On this day we should be stronger than ever now, even more proud than we have ever been, and proud of these sons and daughters who lost their lives for the freedom of Kosovo that we enjoy today,” Rifa Jashari, the brother of one of the first Kosovo Liberation Army commanders Adem Jashari, told the mourners.

According to survivors, the village was surrounded in the early morning of April 5, 1999, by Serbian forces who immediately forced people from their homes and started burning houses.

Some of the villagers were shot on the spot, then after a few days their bodies were removed and were listed as missing until last year when they were found in a mass grave near the southern Serbian town of Raska.

The remains of 28 of the victims that were found were handed over to their families on Friday by the European Union’s rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX.

The remains of 54 people were recovered during the two-month exhumation operation in Raska from April to June last year.

Fifty-three of them have been identified; so far there has been no DNA match for the last body.

The Serbian prosecution is currently investigating the crimes in Rezalle together with EULEX. Several witnesses have been questioned but it is unknown if any suspects have been identified by the investigators.

In January, the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre published a report claiming that the current Serbian army chief Ljubisa Dikovic, as a commander of the 37th Brigade of the Yugoslav Army during the Kosovo conflict, was responsible for the killings and the removal of bodies from Rezalle.

Dikovic has denied the allegations.

Kosovo Albanians pay their last respects to the victims. Photo:Beta/AP/Visar Kryeziu.

Kosovo Albanians pay their last respects to the victims. Photo:Beta/AP/Visar Kryeziu.

Kosovo Albanians pay their last respects to the victims. Photo:Beta/AP/Visar Kryeziu.

Kosovo Albanians pay their last respects to the victims. Photo:Beta/AP/Visar Kryeziu.



