On Wednesday, the citizens of Sarajevo and numerous delegations marked the 34th anniversary of the massacre of civilians in Ferhadija Street, in the city center, in which 26 citizens were killed, by laying flowers and paying their respects. In what was then Vase Miskina Street (now Ferhadija), a terrible massacre was carried out against innocent civilians who were standing in line for bread, by a missile fired from the position of the Army of the Republika Srpska.
In addition to the members of the victims’ families, flowers were laid at the memorial in Ferhadija by the member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Željko Komšić, representatives of other levels of government, representatives of the victims’ associations and numerous citizens.
During the commemoration, messages were sent that one should not forget what the citizens of Sarajevo survived during the siege, and that the memory of the victims must remain permanently present in the collective consciousness as a warning to future generations.
On May 27, 1992, the following were killed by a shell fired from the position of the Republika Srpska Army above Sarajevo in Ferhadija Street: Nedžad Abdija, Ismet Asćerić, Ruždija Bektešević, Snježana Biloš, Predrag Bogdanović, Vladimir Bogunović, Vasva Čengić, Gordana Čeklić, Mirsad Fazlagić, Emina Karamustafić, Mediha Omerović, Bahrija Pilav, Mila Ruždić, Mile Ružić. Hatidža Salić, Galib Sinotić, Abdulah Sarajlić, Sulejman Sarajlić, Sreten Stamenović, Srećko Šiklić, Božica Trajeri-Pataki, Vlatko Tanacković, Srećko Tanasković, Tamara Vejzagić-Kostić, Jusuf Vladović and Izudin Zukić.
Siege of Sarajevo
The Siege of Sarajevo was one of the longest sieges in the history of modern warfare and the longest siege of a capital city ever. It lasted a total of 44 months or 1,425 days, from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996, three times longer than the Siege of Stalingrad in World War II.
An average of 329 shells were fired at Sarajevo per day, while a total of about 50,000 tons of artillery shells were fired at the city. These figures alone show the horror of the war-torn city of Sarajevo during the siege.
11,541 citizens of Sarajevo died during the siege, including 1,601 children.
For terrorizing civilians during the siege of Sarajevo in the period 1992-1995, among others, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts sentenced the wartime commander of the Republika Srpska Army, Ratko Mladić, and the wartime president of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, to life imprisonment.
The Hague Tribunal sentenced the commander of the Sarajevo-Romania Corps of the VRS, Stanislav Galić, to life imprisonment for the siege of Sarajevo, and Dragomir Milošević and Momčilo Perišić, also high-ranking officers of the VRS, were sentenced.
