Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders on Saturday said the Netherlands carried responsibility as a member of the international community for the murder of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in 1995.

He was speaking during a ceremony at a graveyard in Bosnia-Herzegovina to mark the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre and attend the funeral of 136 newly found victims, identified using DNA analysis, who were buried at a memorial centre alongside a mass grave of more than 6,000.

Koenders said what happened in Srebrenic was ‘genocide’ and a ‘black page in European history’.

He used the term genocide just four days after Russia vetoed a United Nations resolution calling for the word to be used, something that angers Serbia.

Dutch peacekeepers were in charge in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica which fell to Serb forces on July 11, 1995. The Serbs then massacred up to 8,000 men and boys, some of whom were sent out of the Dutch military compound.