Migrants from Africa and Mideast who died in Bosnia get marble headstones and a memorial

By SABINA NIKSIC
Associated Press

BIJELJINA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — In cities along a section of the Drina River that forms a natural border between Bosnia and Serbia, simple, durable gravestones mark the final resting places of dozens of migrants who drowned in recent years trying to reach Western Europe. Their often decomposing bodies were retrieved on the Bosnian side of the border, examined by a forensic pathologist and then buried — unidentified and unclaimed — with no loved ones to mark the passing of their lives. The gravestones recently replaced decaying wooden markers under which the remains of 41 people from the Middle East and Africa seeking a better life in Europe were originally interred.