Dubrovnik is on Saturday marking the 30th anniversary of the operation "the Liberation of the South of Croatia" which was conducted in 1992 to deblock the siege of Dubrovnik and liberate 1,200 kilometres in the southernmost Croatia, occupied by the JNA army and Serb and Montenegrin paramilitaries.

The ceremonies commemorating the 30th anniversary of that military and police operation started on Friday with the opening of an exhibition on the 1991-1995 Homeland War. On Saturday, wreath-laying ceremonies will be held in memory of the fallen defenders and other events will take place in Dubrovnik on this occasion.

In September 1991, the occupying forces, situated in the Montenegrin city of Herceg-Novi and in the town o Trebinje, Bosnia and Herzegovina launched assaults against Dubrovnik and its wider area with the aim to raid that Croatian region and reach the delta of the River Neretva.

The battle front was over 200 kilometres long.

In April 1992, the Croatian forces launched the liberating operation which lasted until October 1992. During this operation, over 240 Croatian defenders lost their lives, and the operation resulted in the liberation of 1,200 square kilometres, which had made up 8% of the occupied areas. The operation of the area made it possible for 20,000 refugees to return to their pre-war homes.

The symbolic completion of the operation was marked by a military review in the port of Gruž on 29 October 1992, when the Croatian army chief of staff, General Janko Bobetko, gave a report to President Franjo Tuđman,

During the war in a wider Dubrovnik area, 116 civilians and 430 Croatian soldiers were killed and several hundred were injured. As many as 443 Croats were taken to detention camps, and as many as 33,000 had to flee their homes during the siege and the JNA attacks.