In the centre of Tuzla, a memorial marks the spot where a mortar shell killed 71 young people on the evening of 25 May 1995. The attack was carried out by Army of Republika Srpska forces during the Bosnian War, targeting the pedestrian area near the Kapija ("Gate") in the city centre. A further 240 people were wounded.
The memorial is a permanent presence in the city's daily life — it stands on a busy pedestrian street, not in a museum or a remote location. Plaques record the names and ages of the victims, most of them in their late teens and twenties. For Tuzla, which maintained a multi-ethnic civic identity throughout the war, the attack and the memorial are central to how the city understands its own recent history. It is a sobering place, and an important one.