Republic of Bosnia

Tensions surged in Bosnia and Herzegovina as US F-16 aircraft flew over the nation, displaying solidarity mere hours before the disputed "holiday" in Republika Srpska, a region predominantly inhabited by ethnic Serbs, branded unconstitutional by Sarajevo.

The Bosnian state prosecution filed an indictment this week charging ten people with committing a war crime in Sarajevo on May 3, 1992, when a Yugoslav People's Army military convoy was withdrawing from the capital.

Bosnia's State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA, said in a statement that it had arrested five people suspected of the murder of at least eight civilians and the unlawful detention, torture and abuse of more than 100 between 1992 and 1994.

Sarajevo City Council on Wednesday voted to erect a monument to the mostly ethnic Serb civilian victims of the wartime Kazani Pit killings, but rejected a proposal by the Nasa Stranka party to name their killers on the inscription.

Turkey on Oct. 19 marked the 18th anniversary of the death of Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina's first president and a pivotal figure in the troubled history of the Balkans.

When former police official Edin Vranj was arrested last weekend while entering Serbia on suspicion that he committed war crimes against prisoners of war during the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict, officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina responded furiously.

Namely, an investigation into the shooting in the facility was underway, and in the meantime, the officials confirmed that the situation was safe.

Senad Dzananovic and Edin Gadzo were found guilty of having participated in the unlawful detention of people in the Stela Territorial Defence premises in Alipasino Polje neighbourhood, where more than 100 Serb civilians were held in unsanitary and humiliating conditions, while being subjected to murder, inhumane treatment, rape, disappearances, torture and forced labour, from May to August 1992

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.

The report published on Tuesday by the controversial Commission for Investigating the Sufferings of Serbs in Sarajevo, which was set up by Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska to highlight its perspective on wartime events, claimed that Serbs were forced out of the Bosnian capital by Bosniak forces during the 1992-95 war.