Commemorative events including wreath-laying and candle-lighting ceremonies were held on Sunday at what was once the Borovo Commerce factory, which in 1991 served as a field hospital and shelter in Borovo Naselje, a suburb of the war-ravaged Vukovar.

According to associations from Vukovar, when Borovo Naselje was occupied on 19 November 1991, there were about 800 wounded civilians and soldiers in the Borovo Commerce shelter. When the occupying forces, the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and Serb paramilitaries, entered the shelter, they forcibly took 115 defenders and civilians who were tortured and later killed. On 19 November 1991 alone, 51 persons were killed. During the three-month siege war, 178 Croatian soldiers and residents in that suburb lost their lives, while 48 victims are still registered as missing.

At today’s ceremony, the head of an association of mothers from Vukovar, Manda Petko, said that Vukovar residents were still searching for the truth about what happened to their loved ones.

Currently, 374 people, who went missing during the siege and occupation of Vukovar are still unaccounted for.

Today’s ceremony was also addressed by several mothers whose sons and daughters went missing after they were last seen in Borovo on 19 November 1991, and several thousand people participated in this year’s remembrance march for Borovo victims.

On Saturday, an estimated 150,000 people joined the annual Remembrance Procession through Vukovar to commemorate 18 November 1991, when the eastern town’s defence was broken after a three-month siege by the JNA and Serb paramilitary units.