Remembering April 5th: The Day Sarajevo and BiH Were Defended!

On April 5, 1992, demonstrations for peace were held in Sarajevo, during which the citizens of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina demanded that the aggressor Serbian forces remove barricades and withdraw, writes the Patria news agency.

Members of the SDS, snipers, fired at the demonstrators from the roof of the Holliday Inn hotel.

After the demonstrations held at Marijin Dvor, the gathered citizens headed towards the then Vrbanja Bridge.

After the crowd started moving towards the bridge, shots were heard from nearby buildings. Suada was hit first, and a few minutes later, Olga.

Suada asked as she was dying: "Is this Sarajevo?", Olga died on the way to the hospital. Several people were wounded that day, including children.

A memorial plaque is placed on the bridge where they were killed, dedicated to them as the first victims of the aggression in Sarajevo.
The plaque reads: "A drop of my blood flowed, and Bosnia did not run dry."

Dragan Vikić, commander of the Special Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, will also never forget that April 5, 1992.

- I remember the stampede at Vrbanja Bridge, the bursts of fire from Vrac, the shooting from the surrounding buildings at Marin Dvor... Unfortunately, Olga Sučić and Suada Dilberović were murdered in a cowardly manner then. Blood was shed, the aggressor sent a clear message about what was being prepared for us. I remember the JNA planes flying over our heads, only about a hundred meters above Sarajevo. They were scaring people, breaking the sound barrier. It was a sign that nothing would be the same again. Serbian nationalists had a clear goal, and that was to create a Greater Serbia. We had to fight, these are the memories of the wartime commander.

A revolt also arose among the citizens, he points out, because all those who felt BiH as their country wanted to fight - there was no other way...

- That day, I saw in people's eyes that Sarajevo would not fall, that we would stop that powerful machinery, even though we were naked and barefoot. And so it was. Sarajevo defended itself at first, because if it had fallen, who knows what would have happened to us. Bosnia and Herzegovina would no longer exist, Vikić emphasizes.

Today, 20 years after the war, everything remains in memories.