Tens of thousands of people gathered in Srebrenica on Saturday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Muslims in the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II, according to AFP journalists.

The participants were paying their respects to around 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the days that followed the capture of Srebrenica in July 1995 near the end of Bosnia's inter-ethnic war.

More than 6,000 of those killed in the atrocity are buried at a memorial cemetery where 136 newly-identified massacre victims were to be laid to rest later Saturday.