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Memorial for children killed during the siege Photo: Anadolu

Some 10,000 civilians were killed in Sarajevo during the 44-month-long siege, mostly by snipers and mortars fired from mountains surrounding the city. Estimates of the number of children killed vary. Some put the death tally at 1,601; the number which the roses will represent.

The rose-planting will feature on the official agenda for April 6, the anniversary of the start of the siege in 1992 and the liberation of Sarajevo from Nazi occupation in 1945.

Aside from city workers, volunteers, including ecologists and parents, will plant the flowers in four different locations in Sarajevo, including near a downtown memorial to these children in Veliki Park in the street of Marsala Tita, according to a press-release from the Arboretum-Botanical Gardens, the event organisers.

Parents of the children killed during the siege will help tend the flowers after they are planted, the Arboretum-Botanical Gardens stated.

Sarajevo is already known for another type of “rose” – red mortar craters at sites where civilians were killed during the siege.

April 6 for Sarajevo marks both the end of its occupation by Nazi forces during World War II, but, also, the start of the 1992 siege of the city by Bosnian Serbs forces.

The association of parents of children killed during the siege of the city has documentation for 534 dead children, but unconfirmed data puts that number closer to 1,500.

Read more:

Sarajevo Memorial for Children Killed During Siege

War Children Publish Sarajevo Siege Stories

Sarajevo Museum to Preserve Wartime Childhood Memories