Thursday marks the anniversary of the death of the Italian TV crew whose reporters were killed in the 1994 shelling while they were covering the story on the killing of children in the war-torn city of Mostar, southern Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On January 28, 1994, reporters Marco Luchetta, cameraman Alessandro Sasa Ota and technician Dario D’Angelo visited a home for abandoned children in Mostar, amidst the armed conflict between Bosnian Croat forces and what was then called the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

They worked on a war story for Italian public broadcaster RAI.

Their work was interrupted in the Marsala Tita Street 82, where they were headed to interview a group of children.

As they talked to a five-year-old boy, the shelling started.

“And they were killed there, protecting with their bodies the child they were interviewing,” said Ambassador of Italy Nicola Minasi, recalling that nobody has been held responsible yet for their deaths.

“They were young people, fathers, their children were very young,” added the ambassador.

The reporters arrived in Bosnia to get the information about what was happening and present it to the world, stressed Minasi.

“That’s why they came to do a story about the children in the Home for abandoned children of the war. They interviewed nurses and doctors who were taking care of the children,” he explained.

Death of the reporters left a strong impression on the Italian public. RAI’s Walter Skerk said those were the first deaths among Italian reporters in war zones in a long time.

“I was impressed by their desire to learn the truth about who killed them (the children), regardless of how impossible it was at that time considering the situation in Mostar. One tends to find a rational explanation for human wickedness,” he said.

The plaque that was installed at Mostar’s Marsala Tita Street 82 serves as a reminder of the story about the Italian journalists.

“In memory of Italian TV reporters Marco Luchetta, Alessandro Sasa Ota and Dario D’Angelo killed at this spot on January 28, 1994, as innocent victims of the war they wanted to understand and document with courage and love,” reads the message on the commemorative plaque.