"The suicides committed by five Croatian Army personnel are not connected, they were not committed on military premises and are not service-related," the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday, referring to five separate suicides of off-duty soldiers which are still under investigation.

The servicemen and servicewomen in question were aged between 30 and 53, were employed by the Defence Ministry and passed medical examinations, Branko Hrg, State Secretary at the Defence Ministry, told a press conference.

“All these people, like all of us, had their own stresses and problems. We live in a time of heightened stresses,” Hrg said. He declined to reveal any details of the soldiers killed, citing “the sake of their families.”

Hrg said that the Armed Forces considered suicide a serious form of an emergency incident that is dealt with by commanders, psychologists and health professionals.

He said that not a single suicide had been registered among military personnel between 2011 and 2020, while in the previous years their number had ranged between one and four annually.

“This year we have had five suicides, with four of them having been committed since June,” Hrg said, offering his condolences to the bereaved families.

Major-General Ivica Olujic, Director of the General Staff, said that all these cases were still under investigation, adding that the police and other authorities were involved in the inquiries.

Asked if the suicides were connected with drug abuse, Olujic replied in the negative, saying that the earlier case from several days ago when several servicemen had tested positive for narcotics was not related to any of these these cases.

Speaking of the case of drug abuse, he said that disciplinary proceedings were underway and that checks would continue.

The Croatian Army has reported five suicides among its personnel in the last month and a half. The first case was reported on 8 June, when a voluntary conscript was found dead in Zagreb County. Another one was found dead in Bjelovar-Bilogora County two days later. The third death was registered in Varazdin County and the fourth in Zagreb. The fifth case was reported on Monday in Vukovar-Srijem County, where a servicewoman was found dead.