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Wreaths placed at the memorial in Vukovar on Thursday in advance of the annual commemoration. Photo: Beta.

Huge crowds attended the commemoration on Friday morning as top state officials paid tribute to those who died when the town of Vukovar in eastern Croatia was seized after a three-month siege in 1991.

The commemoration takes place in Vukovar each year on November 18, when the last non-Serb civilians were expelled from the town by the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries.

For the 25th anniversary, pupils from Vukovar’s primary schools will light candles on the way from the town’s hospital to the memorial cemetery, on the outskirts, where all those killed during the siege are buried.

War veterans who fought to defend the town, along with families of those who were killed and missing persons from Vukovar, will also assemble at the football stadium and walk to the hospital.

The ceremony is being held in the garden of the town’s hospital, where the last defenders, wounded people and civilians surrendered in 1991.

State and town officials, religious leaders and others will listen to the national anthem and recitals of patriotic texts and folk songs.

They will then walk in a long column along a 5.5-kilometre route to the memorial cemetery, led by veterans and families of those who were killed or went missing. Over 3,000 civilians and soldiers died, 86 of them children.

At the memorial cemetery, state and local officials from all over Croatia, war veterans and victims’ organisations and political parties will lay wreaths and light candle in memory of those who died in Vukovar and during the entire 1991-95 war in Croatia.

After a Catholic mass at the cemetery, lanterns will be thrown into the Danube, and candles will be lit in cities and towns across Croatia.

Besieged from late August 1991 by Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries, the defenders of Vukovar surrendered on November 18, after which all the non-Serb population was expelled from the town, and a number of prisoners of war and civilians were deported to prisons and detention camps in Serbia.

After being under the control of rebel Croatian Serbs for four years, Vukovar was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia under the Erdut peace agreement in 1996 and 1997.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia convicted two Yugoslav People’s Army officers of wartime crimes in Vukovar – colonel Mile Mrksic, who was sentenced to 20 years, and major Veselin Sljivancanin, who was jailed for 10 years. Mrksic died last year.

According to the UN court’s verdict, Mrksic decided to withdraw Yugoslav People’s Army officers and soldiers who were guarding prisoners of war in Ovcara on November 20, 1991, enabling Territorial Defence and paramilitary forces to commit numerous murders.

Two hundred and sixty people – non-Serb civilians and prisoners of war, were executed at Ovcara, which became the biggest mass grave of the war in Croatia.

The verdict said that Sljivancanin, “despite being responsible for the security of prisoners of war and having visited Ovcara at a time when they were being mistreated, did nothing to stop the beatings or to prevent their continuation”.

Serbian courts have also convicted 16 people, mostly paramilitaries, of being responsible for the killings in Ovcara.

For crimes committed in Vukovar, the Croatian state attorney’s office has launched criminal proceedings against 1,203 people, and 181 people have been convicted.