Brcko Bridge Blast Deaths Commemorated in Bosnia

This year's commemoration of the April 30 1992 Brcko bridge massacre was organised by the Association of Families of the Missing, Forcibly Taken away and Killed Bosniaks of Brcko District of BiH and the Association of Families of the Missing, Forcibly Taken away and Killed Croats in collaboration with associations for helping victims and survivors of sexual violence and detainees.

It was also attended by former members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ARBiH, the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, the Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, and peace activists from the region.

According to the Center for Non-Violent Action, CNA, a peacebuilding organisation founded in 1997 in Sarajevo, most of the victims got caught on the bridge when attempting to enter Bosnia from Croatia at dawn on April 30, 1992.

"The bridge had previously been mined and damaged. The civilians waited in Gunja [Croatia] for the curfew to end so they could walk across the bridge early in the morning. The bridge was blown up just before 5 a.m. while a convoy of civilians was crossing it, as the Croatian authorities had allowed them to cross the bridge around 15 minutes before the curfew expired," it recalled.

"The killed people came from various parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which made it more difficult to determine the exact number of casualties. The fact that their bodies ended up in the Sava river further complicated the search for the missing," it announced, adding that more than a hundred civilians who found themselves on the bridge at that moment were killed.

Ramiz Ahmetovic, president of the Association of Families of the Missing, Forcibly Taken away and Killed Bosniaks of Brcko District, said that although 29 years had passed, no indictment had been...