"The humanitarian convoy was the only response to hundreds of appeals I sent at that time from the besieged Vukovar. It seemed to us that those appeals were in vain and that nobody could hear us," said the war-time and current director of the Vukovar hospital, Vesna Bosanac.
Although the humanitarian aid organisation Medicins Sans Frontieres had planned to organise convoys two times a week, the convoy which on 19 October evacuated 112 patients with the most serious wounds was the first and last successful convoy, Bosanac said.
She recalled that some 2,500 wounded people had been treated in the hospital during the three-month siege of the town in the autumn of 1991.
After the ceremony, the participants attended a lecture on psychological trauma and toured the hospital basement where patients were treated during the siege of the town and which is being transformed into a museum. They also laid wreaths and lit candles at the mass grave site at Ovcara outside the town and at the Memorial Cemetery of Homeland War Victims in Vukovar.