Bloody Playground in Srebrenica: Shells Among Children, 12 April 1993

A Town Full of Refugees

In the spring of 1993, Srebrenica was the only area in the surrounding region controlled by the Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine (ARBiH). Cerska and Konjević Polje had already fallen, and United Nations units had entered the town. A town that had had about 7,000 inhabitants before the war was now receiving more than 30,000 people. Refugees from the surrounding municipalities were housed in the school next to the playground.

In April, there was talk in the town of a ceasefire and demilitarization. After months of fear, a fragment of everyday life was returning to Srebrenica, and young people gathered at football tournaments.

The Attack on the Playground

On the afternoon of 12 April 1993, shells fired from positions of the Vojska Republike Srpske (VRS) fell on the playground in front of the primary and secondary school in Srebrenica. According to a Helsinki Watch report, the fire hit the playground at around 3 p.m. At that moment, the playground was occupied mostly by children and young people.

Sources also differ on the number of shells: according to the official figure, four fell, while other sources state three, six or seven.

Number of Victims

According to official figures, 74 Bosniak civilians were killed at the scene and about 100 people were wounded, most of them young. According to N1 and Detektor, many of the wounded died on the way to the hospital or in the hospital itself, so the total number of victims is given as 105. Naser Orić, the commander of the ARBiH in Srebrenica, presents his own data on the attack in his book "Srebrenica svjedoči i optužuje", and the ARBiH doctor Nedret Mujkanović gave The New York Times his own figures on the victims in 1993. Their figures differ from the official ones. Establishing the exact number is made even harder by the fact that the documentation of the Srebrenica health centre was destroyed in July 1995.

Among those killed were nineteen-year-old Hidajet Begić from Srebrenica and Fikreta Ibrahimović.

Testimonies of Survivors

According to the testimony of Mirza Ibrahimović, who was 12 years old at the time, the explosion tore apart the boy next to him before his eyes. Someone shouted "Run", and he took shelter in a cellar.

Hasan Hasanović, a minor at the time, was wounded in the attack. The explosion briefly knocked him unconscious, and he then fled into a nearby house. "Suddenly, four meters in front of me on this playground, an explosion," he recalled later. According to him, the French general Philippe Morillon visited Srebrenica that same day.

The wounded arrived at the war hospital. According to the testimony of the doctor Avdo Hasanović, operations there were performed without anaesthesia, instruments, blood or medicines, and amputations were carried out with a saw disinfected with rakija.

No Accountability

Four days after the attack, on 16 April 1993, the United Nations declared Srebrenica a safe area.

The original indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) against Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, issued on 24 July 1995, listed the shelling of the playground in Srebrenica on 12 April 1993 among the attacks on gathered civilians, with 15 victims. The specific perpetrators of the attack were never identified, no official investigation was ever conducted, and no one has been tried for this crime. "No one has answered for the crime as yet," stated Hamdija Fejzić, deputy mayor of the Srebrenica municipality, in 2023.

Remembrance

Every 12 April, the Mothers of Srebrenica hold a commemoration at the playground, where a memorial plaque stands.