How 8000 Bosnian Muslims were killed 25 years ago?

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb troops captured the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In less than two weeks, his forces systematically killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.

It was the worst massacre on European soil since World War II.

Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb units, was launching a military massacre while advising frightened civilians to remain fearless.

This series lasted for 10 days.

UN peacekeepers, armed with light weapons, did nothing to stop the violence in the area, which has been declared a "refuge" by the United Nations.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan later said: "The tragedy of Srebrenica will always be a nightmare for the history of the United Nations."

The massacre was part of the genocide of Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian war. The Bosnian war was one of several armed conflicts that erupted during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The state, then known as the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was part of Yugoslavia and was home to many ethnic groups, including Bosnian Muslims, Conservative Serbs and Catholics.

Bosnia-Herzegovina later declared its independence in a 1992 referendum and was soon recognized by the US and European governments.

But the Bosnian Serb population boycotted the referendum. Shortly afterwards, Bosnian Serb forces backed by the Serbian government invaded the newly created country.

They began expelling Bosnians from the area in order to make Greater Serbia. This policy was tantamount to genocide.

The Bosnians are predominantly Muslim and belong to the Bosnian Slavic race who converted to Islam in the Middle Ages during the Ottoman Turkish rule.

Srebrenica was captured by Bosnian Serb troops in 1992, but was soon recaptured by Bosnian forces. The city was besieged by clashes between the two sides.

In April 1993, the United Nations Security Council declared the area "safe from any armed attack or other hostile action."

But the siege continued. The supply of civilians and a small force of Dutch soldiers serving as UN peacekeepers began to dwindle. Bosnians starve to death

On July 6, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces invaded Srebrenica with a thud. UN forces surrendered or retreated into the city, and when NATO forces were called in for air strikes, it did nothing to stop Serb forces from advancing.

The enclave came under their control within five days. General Mladic, along with other generals, triumphantly entered and patrolled the city. About 20,000 refugees fled to the UN's main Dutch camp.

The carnage began the next day. When Muslim refugees boarded buses to leave the city, Bosnian Serb forces separated the men and boys from the crowd and drove them away to shoot them dead.

Thousands were hanged and their bodies dumped into mass graves by bulldozers. Reports say that some people were buried alive while some elderly people had to watch their children being killed in front of their eyes.

Meanwhile, women and girls were taken out of the line of migrants and raped. Witnesses say the roads were littered with bodies.

Dutch soldiers with less equipment watched the aggression of Serb soldiers and did nothing until 5,000 Muslims who had taken refuge in their camp were handed over to them.

A UN tribunal investigating the incidents in The Hague later revealed a plot to carry out the massacre.

The verdict against a Bosnian Serb commander said "a concerted effort was made to arrest all Muslim men of military age." Men were regularly searched on buses carrying women and children, and search soldiers often took young boys and old men who were not eligible to serve in the army.

The effects of this massacre still resonate today.

Twenty-five years after the genocide, victims' bodies and mass graves are still found.

A 2002 report accused the Dutch government and military officials of failing to prevent the killings. The entire government resigned in the wake of the report. In 2019, the country's Supreme Court upheld a decision in which the Netherlands was partially held responsible for the deaths of 350 people in Srebrenica.

In 2017, a UN tribunal in The Hague found Mladic guilty of genocide and other atrocities. Commander Mladic went into hiding after the end of the war in 1995 and was nowhere to be seen before meeting his cousin in northern Serbia in 2011.

Serbia has apologized for crimes committed since the end of the war, but has refused to recognize it as genocide.