Locals in Alipasino Polje, a neighbourhood in Sarajevo, gathered on Thursday to mark 26 years since Bosnian Serb forces fired three mortar shells and hit a group of children as they were sledging, killing six of them.

Jasmin Brkovic, Mirza Dedovic, Admir Subasic, Danijel Jurenic, Indira Brkovic and Nermin Rizvanovic, aged between 5 and 14, lost their lives that day. Another six were injured.

Family members of the killed children, members of the Association of Parents of Children Killed in Besieged Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995, local government and municipality representatives and employees of the local primary school ‘Mesa Selimovic’ laid flowers at a monument erected at the spot where the shells landed.

“Unfortunately, the enemy shell did not choose based on age either, nor did it based on religious or ethnic affiliation in the killing spree in Sarajevo during its occupation, which saw 11,541 citizens killed, including 1,601 children,” said Sarajevo Canton Communal Economy and Infrastructure, Srdjan Mandic.

Among those gathered was Zehra Subasic, who lost her son, Admir, in the massacre.

“The sorrow and pain we parents of the killed children feel for 26 already can not be erased. Our children would now have been more than 30 years old. While the perpetrators of this crime were never punished, our children never had a chance to begin life, go to school, have a youth,” Subasic said.

“That is another wound that can not heal until there is justice for these children, as well as for all others who were killed,” she stressed.