ŠKOBO: NATO AGGRESSION VICTIMS MUST NOT BE FORGOTTEN

ISTOČNO SARAJEVO, SEPTEMBER 9 /SRNA/ – Under no circumstances should Serbs allow the victims of NATO aggression against Republika Srpska and Serbia to be forgotten, thus everything must be done to ensure justice is served to those responsible for this unscrupulous terror, historian Lazar Škobo told SRNA.

Škobo emphasized that a paradox is evident in 20th-century history of Serbs that Western countries celebrated the Serbian people in 1918 for being on the side of anti-imperialism and for making enormous sacrifices in that struggle, while the same countries bombed Serbs in 1995 and 1999 simply because they remained on that same stance. "For those who sought to subjugate our people and who have, for decades, been creating satellite states around the world, our perseverance was a stumbling block. That is, unquestionably, the sole reason why Serbs were targeted by NATO aggression at the end of the last century," Škobo said. According to him, a particularly grim aspect of these events is the fact that the aggressors did not spare civilians, which the fate of the Galinac family is the clearest example of the nature of NATO aggression. "The use of depleted uranium during NATO bombing renders any attempt to give a `humanitarian connotation` to these acts by Western power centres meaningless," Škobo stated. The Day of Remembrance for the Victims of NATO Bombing in Republika Srpska is commemorated on September 9, as on this date in 1995, a NATO pilot killed siblings Radmila and Radenko Galinac on a destroyed bridge near Semizovac, close to Sarajevo. They were among the first civilian victims of NATO aggression. Today in Istočno Sarajevo, the Day of Remembrance will be marked for those killed in the NATO bombing of Republika Srpska, during which depleted uranium ammunition was used. 47 soldiers of the Republika Srpska Army were killed, along with at least 7 civilians, while over 100 soldiers were wounded and 21 civilians severely injured. During the sixteen-day bombing campaign, NATO forces dropped over 1,000 bombs on the territory of Republika Srpska, including Tomahawk missiles, with a total explosive weight of about 10,000 tons. In addition, depleted uranium ammunition was used, the consequences of which are still being felt by the population today. The initiative to commemorate the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of NATO Bombing was launched in Andrićgrad on August 26, 2018, at the proposal of the News Agency of Republika Srpska – SRNA.