TRIBUTE PAID TO 56 REPUBLIKA SRPSKA ARMY SOLDIERS KILLED ON MAJEVICA

LOPARE/MAJEVICA, AUGUST 19 /SRNA/ - A memorial service was held today at the memorial site in Grabik on Mount Majevica for 56 Republika Srpska Army soldiers, with particular emphasis placed on the unpunished war crime in which four soldiers were burned alive inside an ambulance.

Risto Radić, president of the Lopare Municipal Veterans' Organisation, said that the attack on a clearly marked ambulance, carried out deep inside territory controlled by the Republika Srpska Army, constituted a classic war crime. He warned of the hypocrisy of the judicial system, which continuously prosecutes Serbs, while such blatant crimes continue to be ignored and go unpunished. Jadranka Mićić, daughter of fallen soldier Vojislav Janković, says that the judicial institutions continue to remain silent about the horrific crime committed against her father and his fellow soldiers. She thanked the institutions and people of Republika Srpska for preserving the memory of the fallen soldiers' sacrifice, but stressed that it was disheartening that no one had been held accountable for the crime. President of the Lopare Municipal Assembly Milenko Ristić recalled that an enemy sabotage group ambushed a medical vehicle carrying two wounded soldiers, a medical attendant and a driver. "They were attacked with an Osa hand-held rocket launcher, which generates temperatures of 3,000 degrees Celsius, so they were literally burned to a charred state," Ristić said. Wreaths and flowers were laid at the site of the soldiers' deaths by the families of the fallen, members of the Republika Srpska Ministry of the Interior and the Third Infantry /Republika Srpska/ Regiment of the Armed Forces of BiH, representatives of the local authorities, municipal and local veterans' organizations, and residents. The memorial at Grabik was erected in 1998 and was the first memorial built in the municipality of Lopare in honour of soldiers killed in the Defensive-Patriotic War. The names of 56 heroes who gave their lives for Republika Srpska are engraved on the memorial. The remains of the Pinzgauer ambulance hit by an Osa rocket launcher, in which the soldiers were killed, are also preserved at the site.