A woman pays her respects at a memorial cemetery in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar, yesterday.

ZAGREB (AFP) – Thousands of Croatians gathered yesterday in Vukovar to mark the 18th anniversary of the town’s capture by Serbs, one of the bloodiest events of the war following the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Some 20,000 mourners marched through the town to a cemetery and memorial, where they laid wreaths and lit candles in honor of the 1,600 defenders and civilians killed in the fighting, national television reported.

A commemoration was also held in front of Vukovar’s hospital, from where Serb forces pulled some 200 people and later executed them at a nearby pig farm.

“It was a deliberate and planned crime like Srebrenica,” said President Stipe Mesic, who attended the commemoration.

Vukovar was razed after falling into Serb hands following a three-month-long siege, and some 22,000 non-Serb survivors were expelled from the area. But the Vukovar battle was also crucial for Croatia’s survival, stalling Belgrade-backed forces long enough for Zagreb to arm itself and prepare troops.

After the war, Vukovar and the whole region were placed under United Nations administration and later reintegrated into Croatia in 1998.

In 2007, the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague convicted two Serb officers, Mile Mrksic and Veselin Sljivancanin, for the Vukovar massacre and sentenced them to 20 and five years in prison respectively. Earlier this year the court’s appeals chamber increased Sljivancanin’s prison sentence to 17 years.