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Muslim Teen Refugee Shot Dead in Bosnian Serb Village
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina, July 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An assailant wielding a machine gun killed a Bosnian Muslim girl Thursday who had recently returned to her home in a Bosnian Serb area with her family, police told AFP.
They said the 16-year-old girl, identified as Meliha Dzuric, was killed when the unknown assailant fired a shot at the girl's family home in the hamlet of Damdzici in village of Piskavica, about 30 miles northwest of Srebrenica. The shot passed through a window and hit her in the chest, news agencies said.
The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) expressed concern over the incident, the second in Damdzici since May 1st, when Bosnian refugees began returning to the hamlet, UNHCR spokesman Aida Feraget said in Sarajevo.
He said another Muslim refugee was injured by gunfire on May 14th in Damdzici. Those responsible have not yet been identified, he said.
The authorities in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska (RS) "should understand that the murder of Ms. Duric places in question their ability to maintain security in their entity," said Bosnia's top international mediator, Wolfgang Petritsch.
He called on RS authorities "to leave no stone unturned in the search for the killer of Meliha Duric," or it could "further jeopardize the Republika Srpska's standing in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the world at large."
Bosnian Serb authorities in the RS are also searching the territory for former general and commander Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who are wanted by the International Crime Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Bosnian war.
Mladen Ivanic, the Bosnian Serb Prime Minister in Republika Srpska, has promised unconditional cooperation with the tribunal in handing over the two indicted war criminals, but has said that their exact whereabouts are currently unknown.
Bosnian Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija, who was recently nominated as the prime minister-designate of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said, however, that there should be no problem in locating them and other war criminals, and emphasized that Ivanic should be given the chance to turn them over, showing the Bosnian Serbs' spirit of cooperation with The Hague.
On Wednesday, some 3,500 Bosnian Muslims commemorated the sixth anniversary of the massacre in Srebrenica, in which between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb forces when they overran the U.N. protected enclave in July 1995.
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