BOSANSKA GRADISKA, Bosnia (Islamweb & Agencies) - Bosnian Muslims on Saturday opened a new mosque in this Serb-controlled northern town to replace one destroyed during the 1992-5 war.
Hundreds of Muslim believers gathered to inaugurate the mosque, built on the spot where the medieval Obradovacka mosque stood before it was blown up by Bosnian Serb extremists in 1993.
The ceremony, held amid tight security, was not disrupted by local Serbs.
Earlier this year Serb mobs attacked Muslim worshippers who had gathered to lay foundation stones for mosques in Banja Luka and Trebinje, two other towns in what became the Bosnia's Serb republic after the conflict.
The other half of Bosnia became a Muslim-Croat federation. International peace officials are trying to reintegrate the three communities but nationalism remains a big obstacle.
The believers voiced hope the reconstruction of the 300-year-old mosque, the first one to be opened in the region around Banja Luka -- the Serb republic's de-facto capital -- would help bring back the town's substantial Muslim population, which either fled or was expelled early in the war.
But some believers said that despite the tight security they were afraid of any public gatherings, referring to the earlier violence in Trebinje and Banja Luka in which at least 30 people were hurt and a Muslim man later died of his injuries.
The outburst of chauvinism brought fierce condemnation from the Western overseers of the 1995 Dayton peace deal, who warned Bosnian Serb leaders they could be dismissed if they allowed such violence to continue.
Some 20,000 Muslims lived in Bosanska Gradiska before the war but only 800 have managed to return to their pre-war homes.
The Obradovacka mosque was one of 618 mosques destroyed during the conflict in what is now the Serb republic, according to figures given by Bosnia's Islamic community.
The first mosque in this entity was reconstructed last October in the northwestern town of Prijedor.
``Bosanska Gradiska has today become a town of peace, freedom and prosperity,'' said Muslim religious Shiekh, Besim Seper who led the religious ceremony.
Seper added that the mosque would be renamed Selamija according to traditional Islamic greeting ``Selam'' -- ``Peace be with you.''