Muslim shot dead near Srebrenica

Between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslims died at Srebrenica

A Bosnian Muslim teenager has been shot dead in north-eastern Bosnia, on the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.

Sixteen-year-old Meliha Duric was killed by an unknown gunman, who opened fire late on Wednesday at her family home in the Vlasenica area, not far from Srebrenica.

She was hit in the chest and died on her way to hospital.

Police are investigating the shooting but there are no suspects so far.

Duric was a refugee who had recently returned to the village.

United Nation spokeswoman Kate Frieson said: "At this moment we still don't know if this is a returnee-related incident. It's premature, but we will look at it."

Thousands of Muslims gathered for Wednesday's ceremony

Refugees began returning to the area on 1 May this year, and one was wounded in mid-May in front of the same house where Duric died.

Returnees are regularly subjected to stone throwing, shootings and arson attacks.

Security concerns have meant that the process of returning refugees to their home towns has been very slow.

Commemoration

On Wednesday, some 3,500 Bosnian Muslims gathered at Srebrenica to commemorate the anniversary of the July 1995 massacre, in which between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslims were killed when Bosnian Serb forces over-ran the UN protected enclave.

Bosnian Serbs chose the nearby village of Kravice to hold their own ceremony on Thursday for the 3,500 Bosnian Serbs who died during the 1992-95 war.

Two thousand people attended the ceremony to lay a cornerstone.

Dragan Kalinic, the Bosnian Serb parliamentary speaker, told the crowd: "In this symbolic manner we pay tribute to the victims of the four-year tragic conflict in Bosnia, that affected all three peoples."

There were concerns that Serb nationalists would disrupt Wednesday's ceremony but the event passed off peacefully.