Wreaths were laid by top state officials: President Stjepan Mesic, Sabor head Vladimir Seks, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who was accompanied by Deputy PMs Andrija Hebrang and Jadranka Kosor.
Local authorities as well as political parties and associations of war veterans also placed wreaths at the cemetery.
After the wreath-laying ceremonies, the Knin parish priest, Ivan Nimac, said Mass in memory of dead soldiers in the Church of St. Anthony.
Friar Nimac said that today's holiday " is a symbol of victory and thanksgiving, which are very important, as victory represents struggle, and it (struggle) has been waged between the good and evil since the earliest times".
"Many did not believe that we could win in the Homeland Defence War and were against us, but our faith was our mainstay and the evil was defeated," the priest said in the sermon.
On 5 August, Croatia marks Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving day to commemorate the liberation of Knin, the stronghold of Serb rebels since the early 1990s, by Croatian police and army forces in the 1995 operation "Storm".
Nine years ago, on 5 August, Croatian soldiers hoisted a Croatian flag on the fortress overlooking the town to celebrate the liberation of Knin and other areas liberated in the operation.
The liberation of Knin 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.
The end of the para-state, which existed more than four years and was founded on the expulsion of Croats and other non-Serbs, plunder and terror, started at 5 am on 4 August 1995. In only 84 hours, the Croatian police and military forces liberated the occupied area stretching from Sveti Rok, via Gracac, Benkovac, to Plitvice and Knin, as well as the entire regions of Lika and Banija.
More than 200,000 soldiers from both sides participated in what is considered the biggest military operation in the Homeland War, 174 Croatian soldiers were killed and 1,430 were wounded. The operation had a positive impact on the reintegration of eastern Slavonia and the Danube region, and contributed to re-establishing control over the entire territory of Croatia.