When a shell exploded in Kapija square in central Tuzla, Sandro Kalesic’s parents were marking their wedding anniversary, and the little boy’s father had taken the day off work to celebrate the occasion.
Two-and-a-half-year-old Sandro was killed by the blast, which took the lives of 71 young people and wounded more than 200 others after a shell was fired from Bosnian Serb Army positions outside the north-eastern Bosnian city in the evening of May 25, 1995.
“When I noticed that my Sandro was hit, I pulled him close to me and felt something wet around his heart,” recalled Dino Kalesic, Sandro’s father. “Then I moved him away from me and I saw blood… blood in his heart area. So we ran to my car over shredded bodies.
“When we arrived at the entrance gate to the Clinical Centre, I felt Sandro pass away in my arms.”
Edina Ahmetasevic was a young woman who also lost her life that day at Kapija; her father Arif was on the frontline when it happened.
“I heard that a massacre had happened in Tuzla. I thought, God forbid, she used to go out frequently. Later on, at around 10 o’clock, they brought me back from the battlefield. I arrived at Gradina [hospital] and saw them carry Edina out of the University Clinical Centre. They were carrying her to the pathology section,” he said.
Adnan Piric was a 17-year-old handball player; he had come to the city centre that day after a practice session when the shell hit Kapija square. “My friends who had come with me, they were lying on top of me, so I tried to move them away, they were already dead,” he recalled Piric lost his leg, which doctors amputated after he was wounded.
His friend Asim Hadziselimovic was severely injured, but survived the massacre, although he had to undergo more than two years of medical treatment afterwards. “I got out of bed for the first time two-and-a-half years later. I shall never forget the feeling. Believe me, I had to learn how to walk again,” he said.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
