(12 Apr 2017) Bosnian Serbs have erected a monument to Russian mercenaries who were killed while fighting alongside their forces during the Balkan country's brutal 1992-95 war.
The 5.5 metre (18 feet) high monument was unveiled on Wednesday on a hill overlooking the eastern town of Visegrad in the presence of Bosnian Serb war veterans and some of the surviving Russian mercenaries.
Bosnian Serb authorities say 37 Russian mercenaries were killed while fighting in Bosnia, seven of them in Visegrad.
Visegrad was the site of some of the most gruesome atrocities committed by Serbs during the conflict, including barricading scores of Muslim Bosniak civilians in private houses in the town and burning them alive and imprisoning and repeatedly raping women and girls, some as young as 14.
By the end of the war, after 3,000 were killed and others expelled, there were no Muslim Bosniaks left in Visegrad. Before, they accounted for two-thirds of a population of 25,000.
A small number of survivors who have since returned to the town protested against the monument, saying it was an "award" for the killing of innocent victims.
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