(Corrects year in first paragraph to 1995 from 2005)

By Maja Zuvela

SREBRENICA, Bosnia, July 11 (Reuters) - Families of victims of the Srebrenica massacre gathered to bury more remains on Wednesday, an annual ceremony that has become the main event of their lives since the 1995 atrocity by Bosnian Serb forces.

For the first time, the anniversary commemoration takes place in an atmosphere of raised hopes that justice will be done and those responsible for the slaughter of some 8,000 Muslims will finally be prosecuted.

The Bosnian Serb Army of General Ratko Mladic seized the former U.N. "safe zone" of Srebrenica in July 1995 and in the following days carried out what is considered Europe's worst war crime since World War Two.

On Tuesday, the new Bosnian peace overseer Miroslav Lajcak moved to sack a senior Bosnian Serb police official and suspend 35 policemen believed to have taken part.

"God grant that what was done yesterday bears fruit," said Elmana Mehic from Srebrenica, who came to bury the remains of her uncle, collected from three different mass graves.

"Twelve years have passed and nobody has done anything for us. They are only playing with us," said Mehic, who also lost her father, husband and many relatives in the massacre.

Several senior Bosnian Serb army officers have been sentenced by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague for the Srebrenica massacre, and others are bring tried in Bosnia. But top genocide suspects Mladic and his political boss Radovan Karadzic are still at large.

The Dayton peace accords which ended the 1992-95 war split Bosnia into two parts, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic. Srebrenica, 70 percent Muslim before the war, went to the Serb Republic.

Muslims want self-rule for the town but the Serbs are opposed.

In his last act before handing over to Lajcak this month, former peace envoy Christian Schwarz-Schilling issued a ruling that the memorial complex in Potocari near Srebrenica should be under the protection of the Bosnian state.

Srebrenica families said that was fine as far as it went, but complained that the same people who killed their relatives were still wearing the uniforms of the Bosnian Serb police and guarding the tombs of the victims.

Now they seem more hopeful.

"Lajcak did a fair thing for us, the victims, because we deserved it after all these years," said Mirnesa Sinanovic, 21, who came to bury the remains of her father.

She said her family had repaired their old house in a village near Srebrenica but was still not living there.

"Until we feel safe and secure, we will not return," she said.

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