In attendance at the central commemorative event including the five-kilometre-long Remembrance March from the General Hospital to the Memorial Cemetery were top state officials, including President Ivo Josipovic and Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic.
Some of those who came to this eastern Croatian town were participants of a marathon race from the northeastern Bosnian city of Tuzla to Vukovar and a group of 32 secondary school students came on foot from Osijek.
The last commander of the defence of Vukovar before the town fell into the hands of the occupying forces, Branko Borkovic expressed satisfaction with today's commemorations.
Asked by the press whether the Remembrance March had split into two processions in his opinion, he said that this was an attempt by the desperate who tried to manipulate "but evidently, they themselves do not know what they want" and described their behaviour as inappropriate for this occasion.
During the commemorative march, two processions were formed for a short while, one including the senior state officials and the other formed by a group of war veterans who left the commemoration outside the Vukovar Hospital in the morning before its official end. However, the two processions merged into one on the way to the cemetery.