Geography of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Yet asked about Srebrenica, the Bosnian enclave where some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces in 1995, Nebojsa is equally adamant in rejecting UN-court findings that it constituted genocide. "I don't think it was genocide," he said.

Republika Srpska had 29 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection by Thursday, and 23 of them are in Banja Luka.

The country has introduced emergency measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection. All restaurants and cafes are closed, and only grocery stores and pharmacies are still working.

In its closing statement on Wednesday, the prosecution called on the state court in Sarajevo to convict Srecko Acimovic of genocide and give him a sentence as close to the maximum as possible.

The government of Republika Srpska decided at an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday that all schools must close from Wednesday until March 30 as part of efforts to deal with the coronavirus.

All public gatherings during this period have also been prohibited, including concerts, theatre plays and sporting events.

Jovan Novakovic told the Belgrade Higher Court on Friday that when he evacuated locals from the Bosniak village of Suha near Bratunac in spring 1992, he did not know they were about to be deported.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the skiing season opened as planned in mid-December, with the two main ski centres in Bjelasnica and Jahorina on the mountains that overlook Sarajevo relying on artificial snow to keep the skiers happy and maintain the influx of tourists.

"Each time after a person had been taken out, I heard a volley of fire or a single shot," Salkic said.

He recalled that it was raining heavily when he approached the bridge, where he saw police officers in blue uniforms and soldiers in olive-grey Yugoslav People's Army uniforms, as well as members of a unit called the Red Berets.

While the political battle for Sarajevo still rages, attention is turning to Mostar and the prospect of a first local election since 2008.

The Swedish embassy to Bosnia, a long-time advocate of tougher air pollution action in the country, tweeted that Sarajevo was "in a category of its own" as the air pollution levels on Saturday were so high that categorizing the health hazard level made no sense. It called for urgent action.

Courts in the towns of Doboj and Sokolac have rejected requests to ban 16 associations whose titles contain the words 'Chetnik Movement' or 'Ravna Gora Movement', while three more courts in Bosnia's Serb-majority Republika Srpska entity are still considering requests to ban the associations, BIRN has learned.