Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina ? Boys without fathers fly homemade kites in the deserted main street. Women without husbands gossip over their meager stalls in a marketplace without customers.

“It’s a ghost town,” said Omer Spahic, a baker in this eastern Bosnia enclave, where up to 8,000 Muslims were killed by Serb forces in 1995 Europe’s worst civilian massacre since World War II.

main street in Srebrenica, in the Bosnian Serb controlled half of Bosnia-Herzegovina, some 60 miles northeast of Sarajevo, sits empty. A report released recently in the Netherlands blames the Dutch government for sending its soldiers on an impossible mission to protect the U.N.-declared safe

“So many of my friends are missing.”

So is justice, and impatience is growing to see the butchers of Srebrenica behind bars.

A report last week put primary responsibility on the wartime military leader of Bosnian Serbs, Gen. Ratko Mladic, but blamed the Dutch government for sending its soldiers on an impossible mission to protect the U.N.-declared “safe haven.”

The report, commissioned by the Dutch government, also said the United Nations must bear responsibility for giving the peacekeepers a vague and weak mandate.

It was the latest attempt to come to terms with a genocide that has haunted Western leaders for seven years.

“It demonstrates that the international community will not just move on and forget what has happened. On the contrary, we all have to learn from it and see to it that this never happens again,” said Wolfgang Petritsch, the Austrian diplomat administering Bosnia under the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace agreement that ended the country’s 1992-95 war.

Wounds that won’t heal

But in Srebrenica, whose men and boys were executed and their bodies bulldozed into mass graves, it has reopened wounds that may never fully heal.

“I dream about my sons,” said a weeping Sida Mehanovic, 77, who lost her husband and two boys in the massacre. “I dream that they’re around me, but in reality, I have nothing.”

Srebrenica remains deeply scarred by the slaughter, which began on July 11, 1995, when Serb forces stormed past the town’s hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned Dutch protectors and rounded up its inhabitants. At a car battery factory on the edge of town, men and boys were separated from women and girls, then hauled away, forced to strip and shot one by one. Their wives and children were deported.

A Bosnian Muslim Cleric calls for a Friday prayer in Srebrenica, a town that was mostly Muslim before the war.

Only 60 of those who survived have returned. Before the war most of the 36,000 people of Srebrenica were Muslims; today, the town of 8,000 is almost entirely Serb.

Ragged holes punched by shells that hit the high school have not been repaired. Rusting machinery, rotting carpets and other trash litters potholed streets patrolled by U.S. peacekeepers in Humvees. Serb refugees occupy the homes of Muslims who were slain or fled, and heaps of rubble mark the places where mosques once stood.

Silver mines to killing fields

Srebrenica, which means “Silver Town,” used to be one of Bosnia’s most prosperous towns, famed for its silver mines and the mystical healing powers of springs that drew visitors since Roman times. Now, it’s known worldwide for its killing fields.

“We were better off in the 3rd century. At least then, we had 30,000 people, the spas were booming and the town was alive,” said Srebrenica’s Muslim mayor, Sefket Hafizovic.

“Everyone knows us for murder. And we’ll never clean up our image and build a new town until all war criminals are behind bars.”

The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, has indicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic as well as Mladic for genocide in connection with the massacre.

Both remain on the run, although there’s a $5 million U.S. State Department bounty on their heads and international pressure is mounting for their capture. In Yugoslavia, where Mladic is believed to be hiding, parliament last week enacted a law clearing the way for indicted suspects to be arrested and extradited to the tribunal.

Bosnian women talk while they knit socks for their grandchildren in Srebrenica. The town struggles with deep wounds left by a 1995 massacre, in which thousands were slaughtered by Serb forces.

Placing blame

Last year, the U.N. court convicted former Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic of genocide at Srebrenica and sentenced him to 46 years in prison. But Karadzic and Mladic still enjoy hero status among many Serbs; on the road from Sarajevo to Srebrenica, two young men were seen selling T-shirts with their likenesses.

Many in Srebrenica believe that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, now on trial for atrocities his forces committed in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, is ultimately responsible for the blood bath. They are incensed that the Dutch report concluded no proof links Milosevic directly to Srebrenica.

“Buried in the earth are thousands of pieces of evidence against Milosevic,” said Hafizovic, the mayor. “Killing that many people and deporting thousands of others required organization that went all the way to the top. Even schoolchildren can understand that.”

Aika Music, whose husband is among the 4,000 victims whose remains still haven’t been identified, is among scores of survivors who stage solemn protests on the 11th of every month.

“How is it possible that no one is guilty? Someone must be guilty someone killed my husband,” said Music, 62, whose home was burned to the ground.

As Srebrenica waits for justice, there are signs of reconciliation between the Serbs and Muslims who share what’s left of the town.

Hafizovic’s deputy mayor is a Serb. Two police officers one Serb, one Muslim stroll the streets, smiling and slapping each other on the back. A Muslim has taken it upon himself to care for the town’s Franciscan chapel, and Spahic, the Muslim baker, gets along famously with the Serbs who pack his shop.

“Survival is the most important thing,” he said. “We’ll never forget what happened here. But we must forgive and move on.”