On this day, August 5, 1995, Izet Nanić, a general of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bužim commander and hero of the war, was killed.
Nanić was the commander of the 505th Bužim Knights Brigade of the 5th Corps of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Units of the 5th Corps, in parallel with “Storm” in Croatia, began operations to liberate territory. The Bužim 505th Knights Brigade, led by Izet Nanić, broke through enemy lines at Čorkovača and headed towards Dvor na Uni.
Just a few hours before the final deblockade in the Vijenac area, commander Izet Nanić was killed in an ambush.
The night before his death, Commander Izet Nanić wrote in his war diary: “Everything is at stake… I hope they succeed. Me too, with them, and then the people. Victory is near. It will be ours if God gives Bosnia and Herzegovina. I feel that I can do what I set out to do, that I have the strength and luck. I have invested everything. The electricity has gone out. Good luck.”
Izet Nanić was born on October 4, 1965 in Bužim. He was the second of their seven sons. Until 1992, he served as an active military officer in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA). At the beginning of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, he became the commander of one of the most successful brigades of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina – the Bužim 505th Knights Brigade.
Data shows that the Bužim 505th Knights Brigade, under the command of Izet Nanić, never lost a single millimeter of territory in its area of responsibility, and that they liberated more than 300 square kilometers of occupied territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For his wartime merits, Brigadier General Izet Nanić was awarded the “Golden Lily” in 1994, and posthumously in 1998, the “Order of the Hero of the Liberation War”.
After elementary school, Izet Nanić graduated from the Military High School in Zagreb. He enrolled in the Military Academy in 1984 in Belgrade (Air Defense Air Force Department). He also spent a year in Sarajevo, before receiving his final military education in Zagreb in 1987. For the next four years, he worked as a lieutenant in the Air Defense Air Force of the Yugoslav People’s Army in Kragujevac.
