End of the Occupation: Happy Birthday Sarajevo! (gallery)

[wzslider autoplay=”true”]Exactly 71 years ago, Sarajevo was liberated from fascist occupation during World War II. On the same day is marked the painful beginning of the siege of capital of BiH during which was killed more than 11,000 people.

“With the joint efforts and sacrifices of Sarajevo patriots, Serbs, Muslims and Croats,” on the 6^th of April 1945, Sarajevo was liberated from fascist occupation during World War II. Liberation of the city from fascists started on the 28^th of March 1945.

With the breakthrough of the 334^th Regiment along the bank of Miljacka River to Marijin-Dvor, in the night of the 6^th of April, the street fights in Sarajevo were finished. By dawn, the German 181^st Division left their last strongholds, and in the meantime, members of the 5^th Montenegrin impact brigade came in the southern part of the city over Vrace and Mojmilo, and Sarajevo was completely free on the 6^th of April at 8 am.

In the anti-fascist fight from 1941 to 1945, 10,961 citizens of Sarajevo gave their lives. A total of 412 Bosnian Muslims, 106 Croats, 7,092 Jews, 1,427 Serbs and 16 Montenegrins, 1 Macedonian, 5 Slovenians and 12 others, were killed.

After World War II followed the new flourishing of the capital city of BiH, which became the administrative, cultural and economic center of BiH, one of the six republics of SFR Yugoslavia.

47 years later, on its birthday, Sarajevo went in another battle. On the 6^th of April 1992, the longest siege in the modern European history, the siege that killed more than 11,000 people, of which more than 1,600 were children. In these 1425 days, the aggressor fired nearly half a million projectiles on Sarajevo from the surrounding hills, but most of them were fired on the 22^nd of July 1993, a total of 3777 grenades.

Attack of the aggressor army on the capital of BiH started with the mass setting of barricades on the 4^th of April 1992 and the armed attack on the school of the Ministry of Interior in Vrace on the 5^th of April, when the first victim got killed.

The siege of Sarajevo was performed by members of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) and paramilitary units in late 1991 and early 1992, under the guise of performing military exercises.

(Source: Er. M./Klix.ba)