The central celebration will take place in the town of Knin with top state officials - President Stjepan Mesic, Parliament Speaker Vladimir Seks, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader - attending it.
The main events commemorating this operation are held in Knin on 5 August every year given that the liberation of Knin from the hands of Serb rebels on 5 August 1995 meant the end of a para-state called Krajina which Serb rebels declared with the help of the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) shortly after the first parliamentary elections in Croatia in the early 1990s, with the aim of annexing it to Serbia. That para-state, which existed more than four years, was founded on the expulsion of Croats and other non-Serbs from the areas held by rebel Serbs. The liberation of Knin carried special significance because since the summer of 1990 this town in the Sibenik hinterland had been the centre and symbol of the rebellion of local Serbs.
More than 200,000 soldiers participated in what is considered the biggest military operation in the Homeland War, 174 Croatian soldiers were killed and 1,430 were wounded.
Years of attempts to peacefully reintegrate the above-mentioned areas proved futile. In Geneva, only a day before Storm was launched, representatives of rebel Serbs rejected yet another offer by the Croatian authorities to settle the problem peacefully.
The politically and economically untenable situation for Croatia was changed with the military and police operation which began at 5 am on 4 August 1995, a Friday, and in only 84 hours liberated close to 10,500 square kilometres or one-fifth of the national territory. The news of the 5 August 1995 liberation of Knin was enthusiastically celebrated all over the country.
The operation, which was given high marks by foreign experts, was planned and carried out only by Croatian officers. Storm showed how powerful the Croatian Army had become in a short time. According to those who planned it, Storm was an air and land operation similar to battles previously carried out by only two states -- the United States and Israel.
Operation Storm marked the end of the war in Croatia, created conditions for the peaceful reintegration of the Danube River Region in the east, spared Bosnia's Bihac from the fate of Srebrenica, and enabled the return of refugees and the displaced.
Thousands of local Serbs fled to Serbia and Serb-occupied parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Serb side claimed for a long time that the Croatian Serbs had left spontaneously, but documents and video footage subsequently showed that the departure had been carefully planned by their leaders in Knin and Belgrade.
During the last year's celebrations of the 10th anniversary some hard-line Serb politicians tried to spread the claims that Operation Storm was a criminal enterprise. However, the Croatian state leadership refuted such claims, clearly defining Operation Storm, as a legitimate and justified operation.
In his public message ahead of the 10th anniversary, head of state Mesic wrote that "Operation Storm meant the historical confirmation of the ability of the Croatian people to establish, defend and preserve its independence and statehood. It also created prerequisites for stopping the war not only in Croatia but also in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as for the peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Danube Region into the constitutional and legal order of the Republic of Croatia."
During the last year's ceremony in Knin, Mesic, Sabor Speaker Seks and PM Ivo Sanader agreed that the magnificence and purity of the operation cannot be overshadowed by events which happened in the wake of the Storm and which the Croatian government, they stressed, is tackling.