Eurasia Press & News
Croatian human rights NGO has called for the prosecution of those responsible for the aerial bombings of Serb civilians on August 7, 1995.Documenta, a Zagreb based human rights NGO, issued a press release on Tuesday recalling that nine civilians died in the bombing on the last day of the Operation Storm.
“We want to point, once more, towards the heavy burden of unprosecuted crimes, which occurred during and immediately after the military operation Storm,” said Documenta.
The civilians were bombarded on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, between Bosanski Petrovac and Kljuc, as they fled from Croatia to Bosnia to escape Operation Storm.At about 10 am on August 7, 1995, in the village of Bravsko, two Croatian military aircrafts, MIG-21, flew over a column twice.
During the second flyover, the aircrafts released rockets into the column, killing nine civilians, including four children.
According to Documenta, the aircrafts flew low and slowly, so it would have been obvious to pilots that only civilians were in the column, as eyewitnesses claim. Furthermore, there were no military units around the column.
The incident occurred on the last day of the Operation Storm, when no real threat to the Croatian army existed, the NGO says.
“We express our solidarity with the families of the victims and to warn once again that there is a lack of solidarity with victims from another ethnicities,” Documenta said.
Operation Storm was conducted by the Croatian armed forces together with the Bosnian Army to take control of parts of Croatia and Bosnia that were under Serb control since 1991.
In April 2010, The Hague Tribunal, ICTY, sentenced two Croatian generals for war crimes perpetrated during Operation Storm. In April 2010, Ante Gotovina was sentenced to 24 years in prison and Mladen Markac to 18 years, while the third defendant, Ivan Cermak, was acquitted.
