MILANOVIĆ: WE ORGANIZED OURSELVES TO DEFEND OUR HOMES

BANJA LUKA, JULY 29 /SRNA/ - Foča war veteran and fourth-category military invalid Dragan Milanović, who has an 80 per cent disability rating, told the Republika Srpska Memorial Centre that local Serbs had not been organized or prepared for the conflict that followed in the period before the outbreak of the last Defensive-Patriotic War.

Milanović said that, when they realized what was happening, they began taking steps to ensure that the suffering they had endured during the Second World War would not be repeated. As he pointed out, they had to organize themselves to defend their homes, and seven days before the outbreak of the war they set up guards around their houses to avoid finding themselves in a situation where someone could break in and kill their families. "After that, the unfortunate war began when Muslims in the Donje Polje settlement set fire to several Serb houses, which was a classic trigger. This happened on April 8, 1992," recalled Milanović, who was seriously wounded in Osanica. Fourth-category war invalid Nenad Kebara from the Foča village of Štović testified about the events on the Treskavica battlefield, where he was wounded in a mine explosion. "Treskavica is the gateway to Foča, and if the enemy had broken through, there would have been no one left of us. The scale of that fighting cannot be described in words. It was horrific. The area where the main assault took place was perhaps the size of a large stadium, and we were also hit by NATO rapid reaction forces from Igman," Kebara recounted.