Croatian President Zoran Milanovic and HDZ BiH party leader Dragan Covic on Monday commemorated the 31st anniversary of the massacre of eight Croat children killed in a mortar attack from the then Republic of BiH Army positions on a playground in Vitez, central Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“This year we again remember with great sadness and sympathy the event that was tragic for the Croat people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The immeasurable suffering and pain of the children's families continues to this day, especially as nobody has been called to account for the crime,” Milanovic said in a Facebook post.

HDZ BiH leader Covic said in a post on the X platform that the children killed in the attack in Vitez were killed during a ceasefire.

“More than three decades later, no one has answered for the crime,” Covic said.

The eight children killed in the attack on 10 June 1993 were Augustina Grebenar (born in 1984) and her brother Velimir (1981), Milan Garic (1981) and his sister Sanja (1975), Dragan Ramljak (1978), Drazen Cecura (1978), Boris Anticevic (1983) and Sanja Krizanovic (1978).

“Daddy, save me” – was the last request that nine-year-old Augustina whispered to her father after she was seriously wounded in a grenade explosion on the children's playground in Vitez in June 1993, during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On the same day, on the same children's playground in a small town in central Bosnia, Pero Grebenar also lost his 12-year-old son Velimir.

The commemoration of the painful anniversary began on Sunday with the screening of the documentary film “Praznine” (“Emptiness”) by Anela Krizanac, and on Monday, the memorial race “To all the mothers of Central Bosnia who lost their loved ones” will be held.

The commemoration ends with a memorial mass at the “Osmica” memorial site. The mass will be led by Msgr. Dr. Tomo Vuksic, Archbishop Metropolitan of Vrhbosna.