CRO GOVERNMENT REPS LAY WREATHS FOR KILLED VUKOVAR SOLDIERS

VUKOVAR, Nov 18 (Hina) - Vukovar and its residents on Wednesday remembered the biggest tragedy of the eastern Croatian town's long history by lighting candles and laying wreaths at a town cemetery. After several months of resisting Serbian paramilitary forces and the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), Croatian soldiers were forced to retreat on November 18, 1991 before the enemy who was superior in manpower and army. During several months of the hardest attacks on the town, 25,000 residents were exiled from their homes, while 3,000 were killed. Delegations of the President's Office, parliament, government, and the Interior Ministry, as well as commanders of Vukovar's defence, representatives of Homeland War associations, Vukovar, and Vukovar-Srijem County laid wreaths and lit candles in front of the Central Cross at the Vukovar's New Cemetery. Wreaths were also placed at the Ovcara's mass grave, where the JNA and Serbian paramilitary forces massacred wounded persons and civilians from a Vukovar hospital. Many candles were lit on Tuesday night across Vukovar, particularly at places where it residents and soldiers were executed. Croatian military ordinary Juraj Jezerinac headed a requiem near "Dunav" hotel in Vukovar. In Zagreb, a delegation of the Alliance of Associations of Families of Detained and Missing Croatian Soldiers marked the seventh anniversary of Vukovar's tragedy by laying wreaths and lighting candles at a common grave at Mirogoj Cemetery. The grave contains the as yet unidentified remains of 660 Homeland War victims, including 450 from the Croatian Danube River region. (hina) it jn/ha