SARAJEVO (AFP) — Bosnian Serbs held a ceremony on Saturday to remember friends and relatives killed during the 1992-1995 civil war, a day after Muslims marked the 13th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.
Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik as well as officials, former Bosnian Serb fighters and representatives of victims' associations laid wreaths at a memorial in Bratunac, near Srebrenica.
More than 3,500 Bosnian Serb soldiers and civilians died during fighting in the east of the country, according to the Bosnian Serb government.
"We respect the fact that a significant number of Muslims (from Srebrenica) perished at the end of the war," Dodik said in a speech carried on national television.
"We feel the pain of the Muslims as well, above all that of the families of the victims," he added.
"But what is striking is the fact that the international community does not give the same importance to the intense suffering" of Serbs in this region, he said.
A monument in memory of some 70 soldiers and Bosnian Serb civilians who died July 12, 1992 in an attack carried out by Muslim forces was inaugurated in the village of Zalazje, near Srebrenica.
"We do not want to accept only one truth and we are trying to prove that 3,500 Serbs died in the territories where, as well, a local genocide was carried out against Muslims," said Dodik.
"This region is biologically maimed," he said.
Some 30,000 Muslims from across Bosnia gathered Friday to mark the anniversary of the massacre at a memorial in Potocari, just outside Srebrenica.
The top international envoy to Bosnia, Miroslav Lajcak, who took part in Friday's ceremony, sent his deputy Ivan Busniak to Bratunac on Saturday.
"I have come to pay my respects to the innocent victims ... we make no distinction between the victims, whether they be Serb, Croat or Muslim," Busniak said, referring to the three main ethnic communities involved in the fighting.
The Srebrenica massacre took place near the end of Bosnia's war, after Serb forces overran the then UN-protected enclave, summarily killing some 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
The International Court of Justice and the UN war crimes tribunal, both based in The Hague, have ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.
The Bosnian war left at least 100,000 people dead.
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