SREBRENICA, July 11 More than 20,000 Muslims gathered in Srebrenica on Saturday for the burial of 534 newly identified victims on the 14th anniversary of the wartime massacre in the Bosnian town.

In line with Islamic tradition the victims' caskets were carried by mourners from hand to hand to their graves following a prayer at a memorial cemetery just outside the eastern town.

The victims' names were read out as coffins, wrapped in a green cloth, passed through the crowd and were finally buried 14 years after Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.

The 534 victims were among some 8,000 Muslim men and boys who were killed by Serb forces after they captured the UN-protected enclave on July 11, 1995, and committed Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

The remains of the victims, aged between 14 and 72, were in most cases found in secondary mass graves where they had been moved from initial burial sites in a bid by Serbs to cover up war crimes.

“We must again acknowledge that the world failed to act, failed to prevent slaughter of innocence of Srebrenica,” the US ambassador to Bosnia Charles English told the mourners.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in a statement, called it the “darkest day in European history since the Second World War”.

The European Parliament in January proclaimed the date a day of commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, calling on countries across the continent to support the move.But the atrocity was not officially commemorated in ethnically-divided Bosnia amid growing tensions with Serbs.—AFP