24/03/1993 | Page 2 of 3 | Voices from the Drina

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People are throwing their children towards the trucks over the heads of the crowd. The trucks are so heavily laden that people are practically sitting on top of one another. Some women and children have been trampled under the feet of the crowd.

Hands keep springing out of the crowd, clutching wads of German banknotes. People are willing to give away everything they have to get their families out.

🧵 I am originally from Cerska in Vlasenica. Today I managed to get onto a UN truck out of the besieged town with my two sons. This is our story.

As the truck travelled out of the town, Chetniks were standing on the road yelling at us, cursing our Muslim mothers, saying they would find us even in Tuzla.

The lorry would sometimes brake and shake so the women fell over each other and I lost my elder son in the crowd. He fell under the women’s’ feet, and I managed to pull him out, but then I lost my younger son.

I had no one there to help me pull him out. It was happening as we drove through Bratunac. My six-year-old son suffocated before I managed to pull him out. He died in my arms as he drew his last breath.

I collapsed and the other women cooled my face with water trying to help me regain consciousness. The Serb women in Bratunac blocked the road. Some held knives in their hands shouting they would slaughter our children.

After we passed Bratunac, my sister-in-law managed to get to me from another lorry and she took my elder son with her. We drove through Zvornik where there was a market day and that is where Chetniks shouted that they would throw us into the Drina River.

Chetniks climbed onto the lorry and demanded gold and money from us, as I was holding my dead child in my arms.

A twenty-year old pregnant girl, an elderly woman, and the seven-year-old daughter of Senad Šiljković suffocated on the lorry as well. In total four persons died in the lorry I was in.