Flowers laid at the site where eight fellow citizens were killed in Gimnazijska Street

On Wednesday, 14 December 2016, the 23rd anniversary of the killing of eight Sarajevans in front of the Safvet-beg Bašagić Elementary School in Gimnazijska Street was marked, Patria reports.

Members of the families of the victims, together with representatives of the Sarajevo Canton, the City Administration, the municipalities of Centar and Stari Grad, the Association of Parents of Killed Children of Besieged Sarajevo 1992-1995, the Police Association 1991-1995, and the Anti-Dayton Association, laid flowers in front of the memorial plaque and paid due tribute to the victims of the massacre by reciting the Fatiha and observing a minute of silence.

On behalf of the Centar Municipality, Osmo Babić laid flowers, stating that those who lost their lives must never be forgotten.

- This is a day of remembrance for a terrible crime that happened in the city center, and this is just one of hundreds of organized attacks on innocent citizens of Sarajevo. Once again, weapons spoke against the human heart. We who are witnesses to the daily events during the siege of Sarajevo and the time of aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina understand the feelings, pain and sorrow of all families of the deceased citizens, Babić emphasized.

At the intersection of Gimnazijska and Obala Kulina bana streets on that fateful 14 December 1993, from a shell fired from aggressor positions, the following lost their lives: Vildana Avdić, Diana Čomor, Rusmir Čopelj, Azra Hanić, Lejla and Razija Jahić, Amir Krivić and Dino Šipilović, while ten of our fellow citizens were seriously and lightly injured.

Almasa Zubović, Secretary of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction and Environmental Protection of Sarajevo Canton, said that in besieged Sarajevo, our fellow citizens were killed in lines for water at the Brewery and Daira, in Ferhadija waiting in line for bread, at the Markale market, during funerals in Budakovići and Buljakov Potok, children were killed while sledding on Alipašino Polje and on Bistrik.

- Let us call things by their real names. They did not die, they were killed. Today we gathered at this place to preserve our deceased fellow citizens from oblivion, because oblivion is a sin and complicity in crime, Zubović emphasized.