Bosnia to bid farewell to 16 more victims of Prijedor massacre

BELGRADE, Serbia

Bosnia Herzegovina is set to bid farewell next Wednesday to 16 more victims who were identified in the Prijedor massacre.

The Institute for Missing Persons said the identifications of the 1992 massacre victims are 30 years late.

Getting proper identifications involves unearthing bodies from mass graves and finding relatives to match DNA samples.

Every year on July 20, newly identified victims of the massacre are buried in a collective cemetery at the Kamicani Memorial Center near Prijedor.

The youngest victim to be buried this year is Husein Jakupovic, who was 19 when he was killed and Edhem Kaltak, the oldest, who was 65 when he was killed.

Prijedor was the site of numerous war crimes against Bosniak civilians by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. The massacre claimed 5,209 Bosniaks and Croats, including 4,093 civilians.

On May 31, 1992, the Serbian administration in Prijedor issued an order to the non-Serb population to wear white stripes on their arms when they leave their houses -- an order followed by extermination, murder and persecution.

Most of the killings took place from May to August 1992.

Between April 1992 and December 1995, an estimated 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million displaced in Bosnia. And as many as 50,000 women, mostly Bosniak, were raped.

The Bosnian War was sparked by the break-up of Yugoslavia, which led Bosnia to declare independence in February 1992.

Its capital, Sarajevo, came under attack from Bosnian Serb militias, backed by the Yugoslav army, in what became the longest siege in modern history.