SARAJEVO
A total of 3,176 children have been killed in violence in Syria in the past 19 months.
According to official sources in Bosnia, a total of 11,451 people including 1,601 children had been killed in Sarajevo which remained under siege for 44 months. In July, 1995, 8,000 Bosnian including 1,041 children had been massacred in Srebrenica. Throughout the war, more than 5,000 children had been killed across the country.
Zlatka Imamovic, a Bosnian mother whose son was killed during the war, told AA that her son Mirza had been killed by a Serbian artillery shell in the garden of their house on March 21, 1993.
Imamovic said that her son had been killed even before he started school, adding that the children were innocent, they did nothing wrong to anybody, but they were killed before they lived their childhood.
Now, Syrian artilleries were killing children again in Syria, said Imamovic, and asked how people allowed children to get killed again.
Another Bosnian Fikret Grabovica told AA that his daughter Irma had been killed by an artillery shell on March 20, 1993, adding, "that moment was the end of the world for me."
Noting that his only wish was that children would not be killed any more, Grabovica said that his other daughter was able to start speaking at the age of 16 due to the effects of war.
Stressing that Bosnian and Syrian children shared the same fate, Grabovica said that children were innocent everywhere, and it was the heaviest crime to kill children.
Nearly 200,000 people were killed in Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995 which was not intervened by international community. Also, two million people became refugees. In Srebrenica, which was under protection of the UN, a genocide was committed.
Reporting by Amir Zukic and Ivana Despotovic
