A group of Bosnian Muslims gathers in front of the re-constructed mosque

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina, July 20 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Thousands of Bosnian Muslims gathered in Serb-dominated Banja Luka amid tight security Saturday, July 19, as ceremonies were held to inaugurate the first mosque rebuilt there since the bitter war in the early 1990s.

About 4,000 people from various corners of the Republika Srpska (RS) and the other parts of Bosnia, the Muslim Croat Federation, gathered peacefully in a former Muslim suburb of the town where the mosque stands.

"We are here for reconciliation. We want Banja Luka, the RS and Bosnia to be multi-ethnic again," the town's mufti Edhem Camdzic told Agence France-Presse (AFP) after an imam had said a prayer to open the ceremony.

The mosque, which was originally built in 1973, was blown up during the conflict in Bosnia between 1992-95 when Orthodox Bosnian Serbs conducted a concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Roman Catholic Croats and the Muslims, driving thousands of them out.

The different communities within Bosnia were represented at the inauguration by RS vice-presidents Adil Osmanovic, a Muslim, and Croat Ivan Tomljenovic, who received generous applause when he spoke.

He said the reconstruction of the mosque in RS "shows our determination to return to these places to rebuild our future here."

The reconstruction work, which cost about 110,000 euros ($120,000), was financed mainly by Bosnian Muslims living outside the country who had fled the war.

Republika Srpska (RS) police said earlier they had called up reinforcements in an attempt to prevent the kind of violence that has marred previous mosque rebuilding ceremonies.

All those entering the restored mosque had to pass through a metal detector before being allowed in.

In May 2001, the Islamic community's efforts to lay a cornerstone for rebuilding the celebrated Ferhadija mosque, also in Banja Luka, ended with anti-Muslim riots that left one person dead and some 30 injured.

Banja Luka was the scene of ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serb forces against the local Muslim and Croat population during the war, and the Islamic community in the town says all 16 mosques that previously stood there were destroyed.

In all 106 mosques were reduced to rubble in RS during the conflict.

"Those who destroyed our mosque and expelled us from here thought we would never come back again," the BBC News Online quoted Fahrudin Prlja, 42, as saying. 

"But love made us come back to our Vrbanja and here is the mosque again, nicer then it was before," he added.

The peace deal that ended Bosnia Hercegovina's war left the country split into two semi-autonomous halves, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs' Republika