ZAGREB, 10 Jan 2022 - In the past two decades, 24,000 people have been reported to have disappeared in Croatia, and in most cases, it has been about leaving one's home or about teenagers running away from home, the Večernji List daily reported on Monday.

Croatia's National Registry of Disappeared or Missing Persons, whose acronym in Croatia is NENO, contains profiles of the missing and the Ministry of the Interior registers all the reports about the disappearances.

In the last 12 months, the NENO public registry, which was established 10 years ago, has included the profiles of 94 persons who went missing.

The registry was designed by the authorities after the case of 17-year-old girl Antonia Bilić, whose body was found after an 18-month-long search since her disappearance had been reported in June 2011. During the investigation and the court trial, it was established that a truck driver, Dragan Paravinja, killed her, and he was sentenced to 40 years for this crime.

Since its establishment, the NENO registry has published data about 2,761 persons who have gone missing. In most cases, missing persons have been found.

According to the interior ministry's data, over the last 23 years, the disappearances of 24,000 people have been reported.

In some cases, people went missing during trekking, walking on river banks, or at sea, however, in most cases, the reports concerned runaways from families or homes, the daily newspaper said.

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