Thousands gather to pay tribute to victims of Bosnian conflict

? Thousands lined Sarajevo’s main street Saturday to watch a funeral cortege of tractor-trailer trucks transport 610 bodies to the site of a memorial for victims of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.

Weeping shattered the silence as the canvas-covered trucks trundled to the front doors of the Bosnian president’s office while en route to the east Bosnian town of Srebrenica. The bodies will be buried during the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the massacre on Monday.

“My older son is on those trucks,” said Sabra Mujic, 64, wiping her tears. “I’m still missing my husband and my younger son.”

Among those who paid tribute was the Bosnian Muslim member of the country’s multiethnic presidency, Sulejman Tihic. Neither the Serb nor the Croat members of the presidency came to pay their respects.

Bosnian Muslim women walk through a cemetery in Potocari, outside Srebrenica, Saturday. Hundreds of relatives on Saturday watched the arrival of 610 bodies at a memorial site for victims of Europe's worst massacre since World War II. Toward the end of Bosnia's 1992-95 war, as many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica July 11, 1995. It was Europe's worst mass killing since World War II.

Some 8,000 Muslims, mostly boys and men, were slaughtered at Srebrenica in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb soldiers who had overrun the eastern town. The killings in what was then a U.N.-protected zone came shortly before the end of the country’s 1992-95 war.

The bodies were dumped in mass graves and are still being found. Thousands are still missing.

Germany Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Saturday urged the detention of fugitive Bosnian Serb leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic to help prevent any repeat of the massacre. The U.N. war crimes tribunal court in The Hague, Netherlands has charged them with genocide.

Fischer said the killing was the “gruesome climax” of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Muslims and Croats during the Balkan wars and must not be repeated. Milosevic is in custody and facing a trial at the tribunal.

Forensic experts have found 5,000 bodies in 60 mass graves in the area of Srebrenica. DNA sampling and other forensic methods have led to the identification of 2,079 remains.

About 250,000 people were killed during the country’s war among Muslims, Croats and Serbs.