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Category Archives: Prijedor

Attack on Hambarine, May 23, 1992

Posted on by Posted in Bosnia, Genocide, Prijedor, Sanela Ramic Jurich

By: Sanela Ramic Jurich

My uncle Emsud's house in Hambarine. Photo was taken after the war in 2001 by me. © Sanela Ramic Jurich
My uncle Emsud’s house in Hambarine, destroyed by the Serb army in May of 1992.
Photo was taken after the war in 2001 by me.
© Sanela Ramic Jurich

On May 23, 1992, my mother and I were visiting my grandmother in Hambarine, not knowing that a war criminal, Radmilo Zeljaja, had given an order to the Serb army to start bombing my mother’s home town that day.

Heavy artillery, which has long been set on the hills around Prijedor and directed toward the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croat (Bosnian Catholic) villages, started spitting its fire. The entire afternoon, the sky above Prijedor was rocketed and falling onto unprotected, innocent people and their homes in Hambarine.

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Mirsad Duratovic found remains of 10 members of immediate family

Posted on by Posted in Bosnia, Genocide, Prijedor

Posted by Sudbin Music on January 19, 2014 in Drustvo

MirsadDuratovicTomasica

A few tenths of DNA findings related to victims exhumed from the largest mass grave, Tomasica, in the Prijedor area, arrived to the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These are the remains of civilians from surrounding villages:  Bišćani, Sredice, Carakovo, Rizvanovići and Zecovi, confirmed Lajla Cengic, a spokesperson for the Institute.

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Remembering and Mourning the victims of Republika Srpska

Posted on by Posted in Bosnia, Genocide, Prijedor

By Sanela Ramic Jurich

Vuka Karadžića 23, Prijedor - my old address
Vuka Karadžića 23, Prijedor – my old address

Two years ago I visited my birth town, Prijedor in Bosnia. One day, I took my husband to town to show him the building where I grew up. I couldn’t show him our condo, because we were never able to get it back from the Serbs who forced us out of it, back in 1992, stealing our condo and everything in it.

My father’s land, about ten minute drive from town, however, wasn’t so easy to steal. Our ancestors owned that land in Ćela since the beginning of time and have survived all of the Balkan wars; Turkish Empire, Austor-Hungarian Empire, World Wars I and II and now, Serb-Invasion.

Our house in Ćela near Prijedor
Our house in Ćela near Prijedor

On our way home to my parents’ house on my father’s ancestral land, we decided to take a cab, but when we told the cab-driver we wanted to go to Ćela, he told us he didn’t know where that was. I looked at him, puzzled. It’s only a ten-minute ride if that. I figured he probably wasn’t from there if he didn’t know where Ćela was. So I told him I’d give him instructions on how to get there.

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Dark Holidays

Posted on by Posted in Bosnia, Prijedor

While most of us are excited about the holidays and are happy to be spending them with family and friends, others are still searching for their loved ones in mass graves all over Bosnia. After searching for two decades, chances are slim that their children, parents, siblings, husbands, wives, relatives, etc… will ever be found alive. Many are hoping that their remains be discovered in Tomasica. However, forensic experts will quit exhumations during the winter at a mass grave in northwestern Bosnia believed to be the largest found so far from the Bosnian 1992-95 war.

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Stranger Kindness

Posted on by Posted in Bosnia, Prijedor 1 Comment

Giving-Heart…but there are some amazing people in this world too. Let me tell you.
As you can imagine, the news about Tomašica mass grave in Prijedor is hitting me hard. Not just me, but every other Bosnian I know and come in contact with too. Tomašica is bringing back some horrible memories, so in order to keep sane, I, sometimes, force myself to think of the good things that happened to me in those troubled times and I’d like to share two of those experiences with you today. Plus, a friend suggested  I should start a blog, so let’s give it a try.

The day I left Prijedor was August 21, 1992. I was in a convoy from which the Serb army took out over 250 men and boys, killing them in a place called Koričanske Stijene on Mount Vlašić. The rest of us were taken to the other side of the mountain and thrown onto the field of mines. We survived, obviously… (Read  Remember Me).

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