Bosnia reopens iconic Sarajevo cable car

By Talha Ozturk

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) – A very famous landmark of Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital Sarajevo, the cable car was reopened on Friday with a ceremony after a 26-year break.

Considered as one of the most important symbols of Sarajevo, the cable car was first opened in 1959, but its rise to international prominence came with the Winter Olympics that Sarajevo hosted in 1984.

However, it was destroyed by Serb troops in 1992 at an early phase of the siege of Sarajevo between April 1992 and February 1996, during which almost 14,000 people were killed, nearly 5,500 of them being civilians.

Speaking at the reopening ceremony of the cable car, Mayor of Sarajevo Abdulah Skaka said that, with the cable car’s reentering into service, the last destroyed symbol of Sarajevo had now been restored.

"Today is a great day for Sarajevo," Skaka said.

Mustafa Tuna, the mayor of Turkey's capital Ankara, was also present at the ceremony in addition to a number of other officials.

Edmond Offerman, a businessperson who donated 3.5 million euros for the project, said that it was with a phone call back in 2008 that the story of the cable car’s reparation began.

"I am happy to see that this meaningful project is completed today," Offerman said.

The cable car will be operating between the city center and Mount Trebevic, located to the south of the capital.

Its station on the mountain was named after the first civilian victim of the city, Ramo Biber, killed in March 1992, guarding the old Trebevic gondola.

A monument was erected at the station to honor Biber.

"He was the guardian of our symbol, and we will be the guardians of his name," reads a plaque on the monument.

Biber's sister Fahra Biber recalled that the cable car had never worked again after the day her brother was killed.

Rebuilt by the municipality of Sarajevo, the cable car will serve on a 2,100-meter line between the city center and Mount Trebevic. It has 33 cabins, each of which has a 10-person capacity and can carry 200 passengers per hour. The journey to the mountain takes seven minutes and 15 seconds.

Meanwhile, a series of memorial ceremonies were held in Sarajevo on account of the City Day of Sarajevo, which is April 6.

- What happened in Sarajevo on April 6?

In the last decade of the first half of the 20th century, April 6, for the citizens of Sarajevo, became a symbol of resistance to all forms of fascism.

It is the day when the city was bombed in 1941, the year in which the Second World War came to Sarajevo. Four years later, also on April 6, the city was liberated, and today celebrates the 73th anniversary of its victory over fascism.

Five decades later, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Europe recognized Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent country also on this fateful day in 1992. That day the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) laid siege to Sarajevo, which was to last for a total of 1,425 days, thus going down in history as the longest siege in modern times.

Flowers and wreaths were laid at the memorial in honor of the soldiers fallen in the latest war as well as on the grave of Alija Izetbegovic, the first president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who passed away in 2003.

April 6 was officially declared as the Day of Sarajevo at a session of the City Council in 2006.

The anti-fascist war from 1941 to 1945 claimed 10,961 lives in Sarajevo, including Bosniaks, Croats, Jews, Serbs, Slovenians, Macedonians and others. During the war in the 1990s, 11,541 civilians were killed by Serb forces in the besieged city, among them 1,601 children, according to the Union of the Civilian War Victims of the Sarajevo Canton.