SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ahead of commemoration ceremonies set for Monday, more skeletal remains of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina have been discovered in 85 different mass graves.  

Despite the passage of 27 years since the genocide, which is considered the worst human catastrophe to occur in Europe since World War II, new mass graves continue to emerge from beneath the ground. 

Emza Fazlic, a spokesperson for the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina, told Anadolu Agency on Saturday that civilians using a forest road to reach the safe zone in Tuzla from Srebrenica were massacred by Serbian soldiers there. The victim's bones are still being gathered from mass graves in various parts of the country, she added. 

According to the institute, skeletal remains of nearly 7,000 victims have been found in 85 mass graves in Srebrenica and its surroundings. 

Thousands of genocide victims who were buried in mass graves after being killed by Serbian forces in Srebrenica were later transferred to other places.

The largest mass grave site yet was found in the village of Kamenica, located on the route used by Bosnian civilians escaping from the genocide in 1995.

The remains of 50 genocide victims, who will be buried in commemoration ceremonies on July 11, were found in many different graves, including Liplje and Kamenica.

Hundreds of people have arrived in the capital Sarajevo and the nearby town of Visoko to bid a final farewell to the recently identified victims.

Every year on July 11, newly identified victims of the genocide are buried in a memorial cemetery in Potocari in the eastern part of the country.

- Srebrenica genocide

More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred by the Bosnian Serb forces in a raid on Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch peacekeeping troops.

The Serb forces were trying to wrest territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form a state.

In the spring of 1993, the UN Security Council declared Srebrenica a "safe area." The UN zone, however, was overrun by troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was eventually found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Dutch peacekeeping troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing some 2,000 men and boys on July 11 alone.

About 15,000 residents of Srebrenica fled to the surrounding mountains, but Serb troops hunted down and killed 6,000 more people.

Skeletal remains of victims have been discovered at 570 locations across the country.

In 2007, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that genocide had been committed in Srebrenica.

On June 8, 2021, UN tribunal judges upheld Mladic’s life sentence for genocide, persecution, crimes against humanity, extermination, and other war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

*Writing by Gozde Bayar