SARAJEVO, July 13, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Al Jazeera Balkans has stopped broadcasting, it said on Saturday, some 14 years after the Qatari-based channel opened the branch.

"This was the last news program for Al Jazeera Balkans. Thank you for nearly fourteen years of your trust," said anchor Dalija Hasanbegovic at the end of a midday news broadcast.

Contacted by AFP, the channel's management declined to comment. According to local media and press associations, the decision was made for "financial reasons."

With its main studio in Sarajevo, the channel launched its program in November 2011, broadcasting throughout the former Yugoslavia in the regional language, previously referred to as Serbo-Croatian.

It was the first regional news channel established after the wars of the 1990s and the breakup of the Yugoslav federation.

It employed around 200 people from all the countries in the region.

Several press associations in the region deplored the closure.

"Its closure is a democratic loss in societies where media pluralism is weak or non-existent," said the Croatian Association of Journalists and the country's journalists' union, deploring in a statement an "erosion of space for freedom and truth."

Bosnia's press association BH Novinari said "Viewers will be deprived of a credible source of information."