LONDON

Britain’s King Charles III on Friday marked the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide with a message honoring the victims and praising the "extraordinary courage, compassion and dignity" of survivors, and urged the world to learn from the past to prevent future atrocities.

"I have spoken before about the terrible events of thirty years ago, confirmed as genocide by international courts," the king said.

"Many of the individuals responsible are now rightly facing justice, but this does not absolve the rest of us of our duties: both to acknowledge the international community's failure to prevent the horror, and to do all we can to ensure it never happens again."

He also offered particular tribute to the mothers of Srebrenica and other survivors, calling their resilience "a lesson to us all."

"It has meant a very great deal to me, in past years, to have met survivors, mothers and family members of the missing, for whom I have such admiration," he said.

He also commended those working toward reconciliation and justice: "These praiseworthy individuals can be found from all walks of life, and from across all ethnic groups, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and around the world."

He stressed the importance of truth and remembrance: "There can be no shared future when the events of the past are denied or forgotten."

The message comes as the Duchess of Edinburgh visits Bosnia and Herzegovina to attend commemorations.

In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces attacked the UN-declared safe area of Srebrenica, killing more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys despite the presence of Dutch peacekeepers.

The forces led by Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was later sentenced to life for war crimes and genocide, overran the area on July 11, executing around 2,000 men and boys that day and thousands more in the following days as they fled into nearby forests.

The bodies of victims have been found in 570 mass graves across Bosnia and Herzegovina.