A part of an explosive device found on the Kornat island does not contain any explosive or flammable components and is not dangerous, officials at the Police Directorate said on Thursday.
Marijan Nikolaus of the Directorate's Anti-Explosives Unit said the investigation had shown so far that the fragment found was probably some kind of target locator or anti-missile decoy.
The fragment of the device was found recently by a fisherman from Murter on the island of Kornat. A part of the public believes the device may have to do with the death of 12 firemen killed while fighting a wildfire on Kornat in August 2007.
One of the theories on how the firemen were killed in the wildfire was offered by retired Croatian Army colonel Nediljko Pusic, who claims that the firefighters were killed by a leftover NATO bomb rather than by an eruptive fire as claimed by experts who investigated the Kornat tragedy.
Pusic has told the media that NATO fighter jets unloaded unused bombs over the Adriatic while flying over that area after the 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia.
The sole surviving firefighter from Kornat, Frane Lucic, made the same assumption in the media before the fourth anniversary of the Kornat tragedy.
Defence Minister Davor Bozinovic has said there is no evidence that would support such a theory about the firefighters' death.
