Serbs massacre 12, maim 15 women, children and elderly lined up for Sarajevo water

“The Serbs just lure us out of our homes by cutting off the water supplies so they can massacre us… I saw it, heads and limbs flew everywhere. I’ve never seen anything so awful.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p.A3.
13 July 1993.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (REUTERS) — Serb forces besieging the Bosnian capital lobbed amortar shell onto a group of people lining up for water at a garden pump yesterday, killing 12 and wounding 15, hospital and police officials said.

“The Serbs just lure us out of our homes by cutting off the water supplies so they can massacre us,” sobbed Dervisa Fazlic as doctors dressed a wound in her arm.

“This is our reality. This i not life. But what can be done?” said Visnja Tufekdzic as she grimly cleaned and wrapped the body of two friends, a mother and teen-age daughter, in a cement shack serving as a makeshift morgue.

The afternoon attack, unreported for two hours because a power blackout cut Sarajevo’s phone lines, was the latest episode in a Serb reign of terror in the Bosnian capital.