05 February 2019•Update: 06 February 2019
By Talha Ozturk, Dejan Maksimovic
BELGRADE, Serbia
Bosnians gathered Tuesday to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a massacre which took the lives of 68 people and injured nearly 150.
The 1994 Markale marketplace shelling was one of the biggest massacres committed during the siege of Sarajevo between April 1992 and December 1995.
Family members, victims as well as survivors paid tribute, laid wreaths and prayed for the dead.
The ceremony was also attended by Croat member of the Council of Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Zeljko Komsic.
Rafet Skenderovic, who lost friends during the massacre, said he still sees blood and wounded people in his dreams.
"I was only 50 meters [165 feet] away from the market place when the mortar attack occurred in 1994. I lost two of my friends," said Skenderovic.
Kadrija Hrkic lost her sister in the attack and said even though a quarter century has passed, her pain is still fresh and strong as the first day she lost her sister.
Another commemoration program was organized at the National Theater to honor the victims.
On Aug. 28, 1995, a second mortar exploded in the main market square, killing 43 people and wounding 75.
War crimes
The shellings are among crimes former Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic was found guilty of committing during his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The UN court in The Hague also sentenced former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic to life in prison for his part in spreading terror among civilians in the capital of Sarajevo and in other parts of Bosnia, in an attempt to clear non-Serbs from certain territories, including the Markale massacres.
He was also found to have had "significant responsibility" for the 1995 genocide of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.
For the Markale massacre, the court also sentenced Dragoslav Milosevic, commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska, to 29 years in prison, among other charges.
