More than 15,000 people gathered in Bosnia Monday to commemorate the 16th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.

A special memorial service was held and the bodies of 613 newly identified victims were buried in a graveyard, already home to some 4,000 victims of the genocide.

It is thought that over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the massacre, now known as the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two.

Ahmed Sehic, 26, was among the mourners. He had come to bury his father who was murdered alongside two of Ahmed's uncles.

"I hope it will be easier for me now, I will know where he is, where I can come to visit his grave," he told the AFP news agency.

Addressing responsibility

Bodies of the victims are still being unearthed from mass graves and identified

The anniversary comes just weeks after former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic was arrested on charges of masterminding war crimes during the Bosnian war, including the massacre of July 11, 1995.

He has denied the charges, as has the former Bosnian Serb political leader, Radovan Karadzic, who has also been indicted. They are two of 21 people who have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia over crimes committed at Srebrenica.

But as Mladic stands trial in The Hague, there is hope that the tragedy will finally be laid to rest.

Several Serbian commentators have expressed doubt, however, that the trial will resolve an ongoing division over Serbia's handling of the past.

Split opinions

Following Mladic's arrest, the director of the Belgrade Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Maja Micic, suggested that the government had missed an opportunity to commemorate the victims of the Srebrenica atrocity.

Mladic has dismissed the charges against him as 'obnoxious'

She warned that unless Serbia admits its role in the Bosnian war, reconciliation will never be achieved.

"If we brush it under the carpet now, if we do not want to deal with the facts, then the things that happened in the 90s will happen again," she said.

Yet some are critical of a renewed focus on the past at a time when other pressures are gripping modern Serbia.

"Why should we be directed only to criticize the past and neglect the fact that in the last four months 100,000 people have been left jobless?" said Zivadin Jovanovic, foreign minister during Slobodan Milosevic's regime.

Author: Charlotte Chelsom-Pill

Editor: Michael Lawton