(Adnkronos) – Italy on Friday commemorated over 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys slain by Serb forces at the town of Srebrenica in July 1995 during the Bosnian war, calling the massacre “one of the most atrocious crimes committed on the continent since World War II”.
“Thirty years after the Srebrenica genocide, we remember with sorrow the victims of one of the most atrocious crimes committed on the continent since World War II,” said lower house of parliament speaker Lorenzo Fontana.
“That massacre, committed in the heart of the former Yugoslavia, revealed the inhuman face of ethnic violence, leaving a deep wound,” Fontana continued.
“We stand with the families of the victims and reiterate, today and always, the duty of remembrance,” Fontana underlined.
Two international courts have ruled the massacre was genocide, but Serb leaders in Bosnia and Serbia dispute the term, the death toll and the official version of events.
The massacre unfolded between 11 and 31 July 1995 after nationalist Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica – a designated United Nations ‘safe area’ for civilians – during Bosnia’s war followed the break-up of federal Yugoslavia.
The war lasted from 1992 though 1995 and still haunts Bosnia-Herzegovina’s 3 million inhabitants.
