The Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces has testified this morning at the UN war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague.
Lieutenant General Colm Mangan was giving evidence about the Serbian shelling of the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia in October 1991, which lasted for three days and ruined the city.
At the time of the attacks, Lt Gen Mangan was a military observer with the UN Council for Security and Co-operation.
He was stationed at Osijek, near Vukovar in eastern Croatia, during the Serbian bombardment of Croatian positions in 1991 and 1992. During his period in Osijek, the town was under constant shellfire.
Mr Milosevic is accused of ordering the various artillery attacks as part of a programme of ethnically cleansing Croatians, Bosnians and other non-Serbs from the region.
The case at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia opened last February. It has been hearing evidence from hundreds of witnesses bout scores of alleged atrocities during a decade of Balkan wars.
Mr Milosevic is the first former head of state to be charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes over crimes committed by his forces in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo following the breakup of Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1999.