The coronavirus pandemic prevented the burial on Monday of 24 Bosnian Muslim victims of a massacre committed by Serb forces in Prijedor nearly 30 years ago, as their relatives were unable to attend.
Thirty Muslim civilians killed in 1992, at the start of the inter-ethnic conflict, were due to be laid to rest in Kamicani, a village near Prijedor in northwestern Bosnia.
But travelling restrictions imposed due to the pandemic prevented the victims' families, many of whom are working abroad, from attending and only six bodies were buried, according to an AFP photographer.
"They have waited for more than 20 years for this moment... to bury the remains of their beloved ones, and now they can't do it," Mirsad Duratovic, head of an association of former camp detainees, told regional N1 television.
He hoped that the remaining 24 bodies would be buried next year, as mass funerals of the identified victims are held annually to commemorate the massacre.
Hundreds of mourners, who wore surgical masks, attended the funeral and the site was repeatedly disinfected while Bosnia's Grand Mufti Husein Kavazovic held prayers.
Bosnia's top officials also attended, but no Bosnian Serb officials came to pay respect to the victims, reflecting deep ethnic divisions in the country nearly 25 years after the war ended.
The remains of five victims -- the youngest of whom was a 19-year-old boy -- were found in 2017 in a mass grave at Koricanske Stijene, a mountain region in central Bosnia.
They were part of a group of more than 200 civilians, notably Bosnian Muslims, previously held in a detention camp at Trnopolje, in the region of Prijedor, in northwestern Bosnia.
On August 21, 1992, they were loaded onto buses, officially for a prisoner exchange.
But when the convoy arrived at Koricanske Stijene they were offloaded, lined up on the edge of the cliff and executed, according to several verdicts by local courts against members of the Bosnian Serb forces.
The remains of the sixth victim, also buried Monday, were discovered in a mass grave in the Prijedor area.
The Prijedor massacre remains one of the most gruesome episodes of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs.
The conflict claimed some 100,000 lives.
After taking control in the region of Prijedor in April 1992, Serb forces killed some 3,200 people, including 250 women and 100 children, according to victims' associations.
Some 650 people are still unaccounted for.
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