Croatia will mark Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and Croatian Veterans Day on 5 August. The date commemorates the 1995 military-police operation Storm, which enabled the liberation of a large part of occupied Croatian territory.
The operation resulted in the liberation of Knin and paved the way for the conclusion of the Croatian War of Independence. Prior to the operation, nearly a third of Croatian territory was under occupation, and the event marked the end of the war and the collapse of the breakaway entity, the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
Karlovac was subjected to systematic shelling from occupied territory during the war. The city was a target of terror, and the liberation of those areas marked the end of the immediate wartime threat for its citizens. 22 December 1991 saw more than 600 shells fall on the city.
According to data from the Karlovac Lexicon of 2007, total war damage in the city amounts to 5 billion kuna. Of this sum, 500 million kuna relates to residential buildings. In a broader context, war damage in Karlovac County is estimated at 14.6 billion kuna.
The human cost of the war was also significant. During the Croatian War of Independence, 1,475 wounded were treated at Karlovac General Hospital. The war events and ethnic cleansing prior to Operation Storm led to a drastic reduction in the proportion of the Serbian people in Croatia's total population.
