Escape from Srebrenica: Three Brothers’ Deadly Journey

Hasan Hasanovic was 21 years old in July 1995 when he joined a column of around 15,000 Bosniaks who were fleeing the attack by Bosnian Serb forces on the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica.

Like the rest of the Bosniak men and boys, he and his two brothers were hoping that they could evade capture and death by trekking through the woods to safety in territory controlled by the Bosnian Army near the city of Tuzla some 100 kilometres away.

"On July 11, I parted from my wife, 16-month-old son and mother-in-law at a crossroads. Two, three, five shells were falling every second," Hasanovic recalled in an interview with BIRN ahead of the annual genocide commemoration at the Srebrenica memorial centre on Thursday.

"I thought that seeing my son flinching in fear would be the hardest moment of my life. But the horrors were yet to come. At that moment, I did not know where my brothers and mother were," he said.

Arriving in the village of Susnjari, a couple of kilometres from Srebrenica, Hasanovic found both his brothers, Hajro and Hasib. After that, he headed towards the village of Buljim on foot with the convoy of men and a smaller group of women and girls.

As he tried to evade Bosnian Serb Army ambushes, Hasanovic often lost sight of his brothers along the way. He said he saw his younger brother Hajro for the last time in Susnjari.

"When we got to Kamenicko Brdo [hill], my neighbour Osman, who was aged around 15, came to me and said my brother Hajro had been killed. Just after they passed Buljim, he was at the end of the line [of fleeing Bosniaks]. Serb forces shot at the tail of the line with an anti-aircraft machine gun," Hasanovic said.

"I went back, not telling my brother Hasib what had happened. I walked back for around two...