Mourners gathered in Bosnia's capital on Thursday for an emotional farewell ceremony honoring 10 newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, two days before a mass funeral marking its 31st anniversary.

They were among the Bosnian muslims, or Bosniaks, killed by Bosnian Serb forces under the command of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic during the genocide in the eastern town of Srebrenica.

The funeral convoy departed from the central Bosnian town of Visoko in the morning, before moving through the capital Sarajevo's main streets under police escort.

In keeping with tradition, the convoy stopped in front of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency building. State officials and hundreds of Sarajevo residents laid flowers on the vehicles carrying the coffins and offered prayers. Some mourners wept.

Before leaving the capital, the convoy also paused at the Memorial for Children Killed During the Siege of Sarajevo and the Markale marketplace, the site of two major massacres during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.

State officials, relatives of the victims, residents and Türkiye’s Ambassador to Sarajevo Emin Akseki attended the ceremony.

Remains to be buried July 11

The remains were expected to arrive in Potocari on Thursday evening. They will be kept overnight in a former battery factory that served as a Dutch U.N. peacekeeping base during the war.

The remains will be buried following funeral prayers on July 11 during ceremonies marking the 31st anniversary of the genocide.

The youngest victim to be buried this year is Senad Jusic, who was 20 when he was killed. The oldest is Ramo Dautovic, who was 56.

The 10 victims to be laid to rest are Senad Jusic, Muriz Barakovic, Hamed Music, Ramo Alic, Muhidin Osmanovic, Huso Cerimovic, Nuko Nukic, Ahmet Guster, Asim Kunic and Ramo Dautovic.

The genocide

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic's command captured Srebrenica, which was designated as a safe zone and protected by the U.N. Bosniak civilians who had sought refuge with Dutch U.N. peacekeepers were handed over to the Serb forces.

While women and children were forced or allowed to reach Bosniak-controlled territory, Serb forces executed at least 8,372 Bosniak men and boys in forests, factories and warehouses before burying them in mass graves.

In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) recognized the mass killings in and around Srebrenica as genocide, based on evidence presented by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Since the war, victims whose remains have been recovered from mass graves and identified through DNA analysis have been buried each year on July 11 at the Potocari Memorial Cemetery.

So far, 6,772 victims have been buried at Potocari, while 250 others were laid to rest in local cemeteries at the request of their families. More than 1,000 victims of the genocide remain missing.

Search teams have recovered the remains of identified genocide victims from 150 locations, including 77 mass graves.

The war

The massacre in Srebrenica was the bloody crescendo of Bosnia's 1992-95 war, which came after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia unleashed nationalist passions and territorial ambitions that set Bosnian Serbs against the Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks.

The conflict erupted after Bosnia's Serbs took up arms in a rebellion against Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia and with an aim to create their own state and eventually unite with neighboring Serbia.

More than 100,000 people were killed and millions displaced before a U.S.-brokered peace agreement was reached in Dayton in 1995.

Bosnia remains ethnically split, while both Bosnia's Serbs and Serbia still downplay and refuse to acknowledge that what occurred in Srebrenica was genocide, despite rulings by two U.N. courts.

Dozens of Bosnian Serb political and military officials have been convicted and sentenced for genocide and war crimes. Yet many of them are still celebrated by Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials as national heroes.