The effects of the 1995 NATO bombardments against Republika Srpska, one of three territorial units making up Bosnia and Herzegovina, will be felt by generations to come in the form of a surge in cancer rates, the president of Republika Srpska, Zeljka Cvijanovic, said on Friday

BELGRADE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th August, 2019) The effects of the 1995 NATO bombardments against Republika Srpska, one of three territorial units making up Bosnia and Herzegovina , will be felt by generations to come in the form of a surge in cancer rates, the president of Republika Srpska, Zeljka Cvijanovic, said on Friday

The statement comes in commemoration of NATO's first large-scale military engagement in Bosnia and Herzegovina from August 30-September 14, 1995. The NATO air force dropped more than a thousand guided and unguided rockets on areas controlled by and populated with Bosnian Serbs. The operation, dubbed Deliberate Force, claimed the lives of at least 150 civilians and caused severe destruction of civilian infrastructure.

"NATO bombardments of Republika Srpska caused heavy suffering, and the generations which were born after it will live with the consequences," Cvijanovic told the local RTRS broadcaster.

She went on to warn that aside from significant material damage, the attacks could have triggered an onset of illnesses such as cancer.

"Damage was inflicted, then came diseases, especially oncological [ones], and more and more information about them is beginning to emerge as it gets collected by people in Serbia and Republika Srpska, as well as in other countries that had their militaries partake the events on this territory.

They are conducting rigorous research," Cvijanovic said.

According to the Republika Srpska authorities, NATO used depleted uranium bombs when attacking the settlements of Pale, Jahorina, Vogosca, Ilijas, Hadzici and Bratunac. In the years following the bombings, the latter two experienced a sharp increase in cancer rates, with at least 400 lethal cases recorded.

In 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina announced it was leaving what was then Yugoslavia. For the next three years, the country was engulfed in a conflict among its Bosnian, Croat and Serb population. The conflict ended with the signing the Dayton Agreement in 1995, according to which Bosnia and Herzegovina was administratively carved into three units: two autonomous areas, Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the self-governing district of Brcko.