Former Dutch soldiers in emotional Srebrenica return

"I was here in July. Now I came to pay respect to the victims and to talk to you," Boudewin Kok, one of the former UN peacekeepers, said in a meeting with survivors.

"I think that this should be the beginning of our joint search for some answers, including to why Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are still free."

The group of 12 ex-servicemen who were deployed in Srebrenica during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war wept during a visit to its memorial centre and cemetery at Potocari, their former base outside the eastern town.

Nine of them were in Srebrenica on July 11, 1995 when Serb troops overran the enclave, summarily killing some 8,000 Muslims in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.