Bosnia's Muslims were on Saturday paying tribute to victims of the Srebrenica massacre amid growing tensions with Serbs 14 years after Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

Tens of thousands of Muslims from across Bosnia boarded 160 buses and hundreds of cars to head to the eastern town for a commemoration and burial ceremony for 534 newly identified victims, national radio reported.

The remains of the victims, aged between 14 and 72, were in most cases found in secondary mass graves where they had been moved from initial burial sites in a bid by Serbs to cover up war crimes.

The massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed by Serb forces after they captured the UN-protected enclave on July 11, 1995 became the symbol of the brutality of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.

Munevera Begic, whose father Hajrudin is among the 534 people being buried on Saturday, is still haunted by the memory of the last time she saw him.

"I was 14 then. He was holding my hand and then they separated us. I still see that picture of him being taken away," the 29-year-old woman said through tears. "He did not live to see any of his grandchildren."

Hatidza Mehmedovic, who is in her late 60s, is still searching for her son's remains.

"Beside the whole tragedy we have gone through we should be happy when we find the bones of our child. I was not that lucky," Mehmedovic said.

"Victims' families are still suffering as mass graves are still hidden," she added.

The atrocity is to be commemorated for the first time across Europe, but not in ethnically divided Bosnia itself.

The European Parliament in January proclaimed the date a day of commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, calling on countries across the continent to support the move.

While they admitted in 2004 that their forces killed 8,000 Srebrenica Muslims, Bosnian Serb authorities condemned the resolution, reflecting the revival of nationalist rhetoric that triggered the 1992-1995 war.

In another act of defiance on Wednesday, Serb deputies in the Bosnian parliament blocked an initiative to declare July 11 the Srebrenica genocide remembrance day in the former Yugoslav republic.

Bosnia's inter-ethnic war cost 100,000 lives and left the country split into two highly autonomous entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs' Republika Srpska.

So far some 3,200 Srebrenica victims have been buried at a memorial just outside the ill-fated town. Forensic experts from the International Commission on Missing Persons said they have identified 6,186 of those killed in the atrocity.

The victims of the slaughter were initially buried in a dozen mass graves.

Bosnian Serbs sought to cover up the massacre by reburying the remains of victims using bulldozers, which caused body parts to become separated.

So far, about 70 mass grave have been found and exhumed.

Experts have sometimes found parts of a single person buried in up to three different secondary graves. The DNA analysis is the only tool for identification.

The massacre has been termed genocide by both the International Court of Justice, which handles disputes between nations, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which tries war crimes suspects.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, suspected of being the main culprit for the massacre, was detained last year and is awaiting trial before the ICTY. His army chief and co-accused Ratko Mladic is still on the run.