A library photo for Coffins of Bosnian Muslims slain in Srebrenica

SARAJEVO , June 12 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The Bosnian Serbs authorities admitted Friday, June 11, for the first time that their forces had slaughtered several thousand Muslims in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, saying the perpetrators had tried to cover up Europe 's worst atrocity since World War II.

A report by a Bosnian Serb government commission, set up in January under heavy international pressure, "established that during the 10-19 July 1995 period several thousand Bosniaks [Muslims] were liquidated in a way which represents grave violation of international humanitarian law", reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The investigation also "established participation [in the massacre] of military and police units, including special units of the Bosnian Serb interior ministry," said the report, which was submitted earlier to the government of Republika Srpska.

Bosnian Serbs had previously refused to acknowledge the extent of the Srebrenica summarily execution of some 7,000 Muslim men and boys, carried out by heavily armed Serb troops which overran a small force of U.N. peacekeepers protecting the enclave.

In 2002, the Bosnian Serb government issued a report minimizing the number of victims, triggering an outrage among survivors and the international community.

In a landmark ruling, the Appeals Chamber of the U.N. war crimes tribunal confirmed in April that the 1995 massacre amounted to a "genocide".

Cover-Up

Chief Prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal Carla del Ponte (R) prays with the survivors of the massacre

Friday's report also noted that the perpetrators undertook measures to "cover up the crime by moving the bodies" from the place where the victims were killed to other locations.

The Bosnian Serb government expected the document "will contribute to an overall clarification and processing of the events in Srebrenica".

In the period which preceded the report publication, some top Bosnian Serb officials warned their compatriots to be ready to face the truth.

"After years of prevarication, we will have to finally face up to ourselves and to the dark side of our past. We must have courage to do that," President Dragan Cavic said in April.

The top international representative in Bosnia , Paddy Ashdown, sacked several high Bosnian Serb officials, including the army chief, for obstructing the work of the commission.

He said the information contained in the report, combined with recent public statements by some Bosnian Serb leaders, "may indicate a growing willingness to face up the issue of responsibility for Srebrenica and to achieve justice for the victims".

"But much more needs to be done to overcome nine years of near total inactivity of the Republika Srpska (RS) authorities and especially the RS interior ministry on the war crimes front," Ashdown said in a statement.

New Mass Graves

The commission report has further said that 32 new mass graves were discovered, of which 28 contained corpses that had been moved from the place where the people were killed.

The 42-page document emphasized that information on locations of these graves were for the first time provided by Bosnian Serb sources.

So far, more than 6,000 bodies have been exhumed from mass graves near Srebrenica but international officials have accused the Bosnian Serb government of withholding information on other burial sites and the fate of those still missing.

"Accepting and facing the fact that some members of the Serb people have committed a crime in Srebrenica in July 1995 can influence in a positive way the creation of conditions to investigate all other crimes committed on the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the punishment of perpetrators," said the report.

Bosnia 's Serb-run half remains the only territory in former Yugoslavia that has yet to detain a single war crimes suspect despite several U.N. indictments.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic are charged with genocide by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague for their roles in the massacre, but both are still on the run.

Srebrenica was the worst massacre to take place during three years of bloody ethnic conflict between Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs as part of the break-up of Yugoslavia .

More than 250,000 people were killed during the war.

Then U.S. President Bill Clinton was the key advocate of NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serbs in September 1995 that forced them to sit down at the negotiating table.

The Bosnian war ended in November 1995 after marathon U.S.-led negotiations in Dayton , Ohio , led by Clinton 's Bosnia envoy Richard Holbrooke.

The peace accord split Bosnia into two highly-autonomous entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation -- and brought in NATO-led peacekeepers to maintain security.