Croatia Commemorates 26 Years Since Vukovar's Fall

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Thousands of people from all over Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Croats from abroad, came to the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar on Saturday to commemorate the fall of the town in 1991 and mourn its victims.

Representatives of war veterans and victims' organisations from all over Croatia came to Vukovar, holding banners and flags. A special delegation from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica also attended.

The Yugoslav People's Army and Serb paramilitaries besieged and shelled the town intensively between late August and mid-November 1991. Some 7,000 missiles fell daily on the city throughout a three-month siege, which destroyed about 85 per cent of the buildings.

After the town's defence fell - officially on November 18 - thousands of non-Serbs were expelled, thousands were transported to prison camps in Serbia, while hundreds were executed at the nearby Ovcara farm and in other places.

Over 3,000 soldiers and civilians died during the siege and its aftermath, 86 of them children.

As has become customary, political leaders, representatives of religious communities, war veterans' organisations and victims' families gathered in the courtyard of the Vukovar hospital on Saturday morning

There, the organisers - the town of Vukovar and war veterans' organisations - played the national anthem, read poems dedicated to Vukovar and sang patriotic songs.

In the hospital's courtyard, President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic said that everyone has to focus on assuring a better future for Vukovar so that its population does not leave the town.

Over the past two decades, Vukovar's population has fallen dramatically, from over 44,000 inhabitants in 1991 before the war to some 27,000 in the 2011 census.

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