Posts Tagged ‘Sarajevo Siege’
Srebrenica, Zepa: 60 Children, 42 Adults Die from Starvation and Cold
“As for the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, ‘he will lie, keep lying as he has done all the time, and he will kill more of us in the coming days” – Nedjara Beganovic.
Serb blockade claims lives of more children
The Victoria Advocate, p.4C
13 January 1993.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Fifty-one children died of starvation and cold overnight in an eastern Bosnian town [Zepa] blockaded by Serbs and isolated for nine months, according to ham radio reports Wednesday. In addition, 34 adults perished Tuesday night in Zepa, 35 miles east of Sarajevo.
In Srebrenica, a town near the Serbia border, 17 people – including nine children – died during the night, according to the reports.
Amateur radio operators have been the only link to the outside for the 28,000 people of Zepa since April. Serb gunmen and mines prevent U.N. convoys from crossing snowy roads to the town, where some people are living in caves. Read the rest of this entry »
Photo Diary: Don't Forget the Bosnian Genocide
Bosnian Genocide, Four-year-old Jasmin Hreljic is being treated at Sarajevo's children's hospital for burns suffered to his face during the Serbian attack on the besieged Sarajevo.
Bosnian Genocide, Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in the Manjaca concentration camp near Prijedor in 1992. They were badly beaten and deliberately starved to die.
Bosnian Genocide, A young Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) child lies in bed and plays with toys while recovering from face wounds received during the siege of Sarajevo, 2 February 1993.
Bosnian Genocide, Amputee Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) children, wounded by Serbs during the siege of Sarajevo, photographed in a Sarajevo hospital, February 1992.
Bosnian Genocide, A man in Sarajevo washes blood off of stretchers used to carry the dead and wounded citizens of the besieged capital, terrorized and killed by Serbs on a daily basis.
Bosnian Genocide, The body of a civilian victim killed by Serb snipers during the siege of Sarajevo. Dead civilian lies on a sidewalk, surrounded by broken glass.
Bosnian Genocide, Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians inside the notorious Manjaca concentration camp near prijedor in 1993.
Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians inside the notorious Manjaca concentration camp near prijedor in 1993.
Bosnian Genocide, A woman stands near the area of Sarajevo that was used for the 1984 Winter Olympic Games which now holds the graves of thousands of casualties of the international armed conflict between Bosnia and Serbia.
Bosnian Genocide, Bodies of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians killed by Croats in Vitez, 25-30 April 1993.
Serb Attackers killed Many Serbs in the besieged capital of Sarajevo
As this photograph of Roger M. Richards illustrates, a woman mourns among the graves of Serb citizens of the besieged Sarajevo killed by Serbian shells and snipers during the Serb siege of the city, at Lion Cemetery, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, April 1993.
Serbs Kill 9 Bosniak Children in Attack on Sarajevo School
The Telegraph
10 November 1993.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — A school became a war zone filled with the screams and broken bodies of children Tuesday in the deadliest attack in Sarajevo in nearly a month.
Bosnian Radio quoted Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic as saying nine children died in the mortar attack.
But early accounts had said that at least seven people, including three to four children and one teacher, were killed when mortar rounds exploded near the school entrance. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy between Silajdzic’s toll and the earlier reports. Read the rest of this entry »
Suffering of Sick and Elderly in the Besieged Sarajevo
Photo: Nurse Galiba Secibovic (Bosniak) cares for 72-year-old Vojin Nikolic (Serb), a deaf mute staying in the makeshift shelter in Sarajevo. Nikolic often tries to leave in search of his brothers in Serb-held territory.
“Death is at Home Here”
For elderly Bosnians, outlook is grim from a Sarajevo shelter
By Samir Krilic
The Free Lance-Star, p.A4
21 February 1995.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Crammed onto one floor of a former school, dozens of elderly Bosnians silently await the end of the war, or their lives, whichever comes first.
Sick and elderly Bosniaks, Abid Jahic (69) and Ajsa Smajlovic (81).
The makeshift old people’s home was set up in August 1993 in a shell-shattered school building several hundred yards from the front line. It shelters 64 sick and old people with no one to turn to.
One doctor, five nurses, four orderlies and a social worker try to cope with the needs both of their live-in charges and 150 other elderly people, many living on their own.
Conditions are miserable. Many of the elderly are too sick or feeble to make it to the toilet, so they relieve themselves on the floor or in bed. Natural gas for heat is scarce, so rooms are often icy. For most, frugal meals of beans, lentils and rice are the only break in a day of staring at the walls. Read the rest of this entry »
Serbian warplanes defy Bosnia's no fly zone, 3 children dead and 10 wounded
Manila Standard, p.7
12 October 1992.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Warplanes took to the skies over Bosnia in apparently open defiance of a United Nations ban while civilians were trapped by fighting in the north of the republic and shelling claimed new victims among the children of Sarajevo.
Government-controlled Bosnian radio on Saturday reported fierce air attacks by Serb planes on the besieged Bosniak-held town of Gradacac which if true made a mockery of a ban on military flights decided by the Security Council on Friday.
It said they were “the heaviest attacks on Gradacac since the start of the war… the whole town is demolished and still burning.” Read the rest of this entry »
Serbs Attack Sarajevo with 540 Projectiles, 7 dead and 40 wounded
Serbian Shelling Shatters Tranquility
By Samir Krilic
Times Daily, p.10A
17 October 1993.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Months of relative tranquility in Sarajevo ended abruptly Saturday with the boom of Serb heavy artillery as well as tank and troop movements around the Bosnian capital.
The renewed military activity led to fears of an impending major attack, since artillery often is used to soften up targets for tanks and infantry.
The main Kosevo hospital reported seven dead and 40 wounded from the shelling, which began before dawn, but eased by evening.
Lt. Col. Bill Aikman, a spokesman for U.N. troops, described the shelling as the “heaviest for months.” The intensity of the barrage — U.N. monitors counted 540 projectiles hitting the city by midafternoon — caused the United Nations to cancel flights into the city for four hours. Read the rest of this entry »
Hunting Serbian Terrorists Around Sarajevo
Bosnian Soldier Hunts His Father
The News-Journal
30 December 1992.
By Neil MacFarquhar
Photo: A father and son pass the body of a Bosnian policeman killed by a shell Wednesday in Sarajevo (AP)SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Samir Petrovic has something very dark indeed in mind when he aims his bazooka each day: He want to kill his father.
Samir, fighting on the Bosnian government side, is in an anti-tank squadron in the suburb of Stup, where his father, Ljubomir Petrovic, commands a tank battalion for the Serbs [who terrorize Sarajevo].
“Chances are pretty good. I think about it a lot. It inspired me to fight,” the 19-year-old said in an interview at home, surrounded by his mother’s Bosniak relatives. He interrogates captured Serbs for news of his father.
The war that broke out nine months ago has destroyed much of Sarajevo and frayed the interwoven threads of its multiethnic culture. Some Serbs have left to fight with the Serb nationalists challenging the Bosnian government. Families like the Petrovics have split. Read the rest of this entry »
11-year-old Bosnian Genocide Survivor Recounts Serbian Terror
Record-Journal, p.A11.
24 May 1992.
SPLIT, Croatia — Part of the biggest wave of refugees in Europe since World War II, Adnan Hebib describes what it’s like to be an 11-year-old held hostage in the hell of Sarajevo.
“In our shelter I saw a man with his arm torn off, and another one with his intestines hanging out of his stomach when a shell hit us and killed four people,” Adnan recalled.
He and his mother, Adnija Hebib, 40, a Slavic Muslim [Bosniak], and brother Admir, 9, reached the port of Split late Friday in a column of 3,000 people, mostly mothers and children. They had spent three days of captivity in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, at the hands of Serb irregulars.
The irregulars let them go after Bosnian authorities let food through to besieged barracks of the Serb-led federal army in Sarajevo. Read the rest of this entry »
First Sarajevo Breadline Massacre, Serbs kill 20, injure 100
“We had to end these negotiations because of these monstrous acts on the part of these [Serb] terrorists.” – Haris Silajdzic, Bosnia’s foreign minister.
Lodi News-Sentinel
28 May 1992.
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — The European Community imposed trade sanctions on Serbia on Wednesday to stop its interference in Bosnia, which pleaded for foreign intervention after a gruesome mortar attack on an outdoor market.
At least 20 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when three mortar shells fell Wednesday morning on a market where they were standing in line for bread, said Ejup Ganic, Bosnia’s deputy premier.
The market on Sime Miskin Street was strewn with scores of bleeding people, with corpses and weeping men and women with torn-off limbs.
Sarajevo TV showed an elderly man, still clutching his bread, leaning helplessly against the wall with blood pouring from his face. A women sitting in streams of blood reached out feebly for help. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Second Sarajevo breadline massacre, Serb attack kills 15, injured 30
By John Pomfret
The Daily Gazette
31 August 1992, p.A1,A3
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — A howitzer shell crashed into a crowded marketplace Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens in one of the bloodiest single attacks during the Serbs’ siege of Sarajevo.
Meanwhile, fierce fighting around Gorazde forced U.N. officials to delay plans to dispatch an aid convoy.
Serbs announced Saturday they were lifting their five-month siege of the city southeast of Sarajevo.
“It appears to be extremely dangerous,” said Fred Eckhard, chief spokesman for U.N. operations in former Yugoslavia. He said the convoy might leave on Wednesday.
Gorazde, as the lone government holdout against Serb insurgents in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, has been an emotional symbol of the war that began when the majority Bosniaks and Croat voted for independence from Yugoslavia on Feb. 29. As many as 100,000 people have been trapped there. Read the rest of this entry »
More Children Killed in the Besieged Sarajevo, Another Miserable Day in Bosnia
A funeral, a hospital – another miserable day in Sarajevo
By John Daniszewski
The Item, 12 October 1992.
Page 2A
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina – No one at the Children’s Surgery Clinic had the hard to tell Darko Vapetic that his parents wouldn’t be coming.
The eight-year-old boy, lying in a hospital cot after surgery for shrapnel wounds, was calling for his parents. The same Serbian shelling that almost took off Darko’s leg had also killed his parents.
Across town on Sunday, the Islamic faithful buried one of Bosnia’s senior Muslim religious leaders, a 32-year-old imam struck down in the doorway of his house by another shell.
It was a typically miserable day in Sarajevo. Read the rest of this entry »
15 Children A Day Are Dying in the Besieged Gorazde, eastern Bosnia
Serbs Begin Major Assault
The Times-News
12 July 1992.
By John Burns
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovima — Four days after the leaders of seven major industrial democracies demanded an end to Serbian military offensives in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbian nationalist forces on Saturday began a major assault on the last big Muslim-controlled town in eastern Bosnia.
The attack by the Serbs on Gorazde, about 70 miles east of Sarajevo, threw the Bosnian government into further desperation.
President Alija Izetbegovic, returning here on Saturday afternoon aboard a Western relief flight from a meeting on Thursday with President Bush in Helsinki, was greeted by angry demands from Bosniak fighters that he release scarce stocks on ammunition for an attempt to break through to Gorazde.
With the capture of Gorazde, where 50,000 people are under siege, Serbian forces would be freed to concentrate attacks here on Sarajevo, the capital. Bosnian government force in Sarajevo are being weakened daily by diminishing supplies of ammunition in their attempt to withstand shelling and the Serbian siege. Read the rest of this entry »
Serbian Army Kills Bosniak & Serb Children, Sarajevo Orphanage
Serbs bombard funeral to Bosniak (Muslim) and Serb (Christian) children
PHOTO: Moments after Svjetlana Glavas, below, buried her 2-year-old daughter, Vedrana, on Tuesday, shells landed in a Sarajevo cemetery and wounded her mother, Ruza Glavas, above. The 2-year-old girl was killed Saturday in a Serbian attack on a bus carrying orphans and other children from the besieged Sarajevo.
Serbian Shells Shatter Funeral
Herald-Journal, p.A3
4 August 1992.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Four shells thumped into a cemetery Tuesday just after mourning relatives and orphans buried two children killed by Serbian sniper fire that hit a bus carrying them away from the bombed-out capital.
The mortar attack, apparently intentional, came as U.N. officials announced they were suspending aid airlifts to Sarajevo for three days because the intensity of fighting made it unsafe for planes to land.
The bodies of Vedrana Glavas [Serb girl], a mentally retarded 2-year-old, and 1-year-old Roki Sulejmanovic [Bosniak boy] had just been placed side by side in the earth by a battered statue of a lion, Bosnia’s symbol, when three shells exploded. Read the rest of this entry »
President Alija Izetbegovic, "Sarajevo Shall Survive"
“One victims remained alive for several minutes after both legs were cut off by a falling wall. His screams faded into deathly quiet, perspiration covering his face and he was dead by the time he was taken to hospital…”
46 killed, 303 wounded in 24 hours
The Press-Courier
24 August 1992
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The capital’s defenders suffered heavy casualties in what appeared to be a last-ditch attempt to gain ground before peace talks begin. Bosnia’s president vowed that “Sarajevo shall survive.”
President Alija Izetbegovic told reporters Sunday that his forces had made headway on the west side of the city, where they were trying to reach Sarajevo’s airport, now under U.N. control. But government military officials gave mixed signals. Read the rest of this entry »
Siege of Sarajevo, From Beirut to Bosnia: Watch Documentary Film by Robert Fisk
This is a three-part documentary by the British journalist Robert Fisk, filmed in the early 1990s focusing on Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt and Bosnia, conflicts tearing these countries apart (except Egypt) and how American policies are –in Fisk’s view- affecting these conflicts and the lives of Muslims. The third part is entitled “To The Ends of the Earth” and focuses on Egypt and Bosnia.
Bosnian Spy Carmen Emini Konda Killed During Intelligence Gathering
Bosnian Spy Dies in War that Joined Her, Husband
Lawrence Journal-World
2 September 1992.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — The death notice in the newspaper was brief: “One last goodbye to Carmen Emini Konda.”
It had to be that way. “There was too much to say, so I couldn’t say anything,” her husband said.
Bosnian soldier, intelligence operative and karate aficionado, Carmen Konda died after a car accident late last month under heavy Serb gunfire.
She was a homemaker who missed her children, cooking and dancing — one of thousands of ordinary Yugoslavs forced by war to do extraordinary things.
Her death was one of hundreds recently among the Bosnian army, which has fought Serb rebels since Bosnia-Herzegovina’s majority Bosniaks and Croats voted for independence from Yugoslavia in February.
The 32-year-old woman cut a dashing figure among the fighters of her team in Stup II, a western Sarajevo suburb. She moved daily behind Serb lines, gathering intelligence about enemy positions.
“She was the most beautiful woman in the world,” said Atif Saronjic, her 39-year-old husband. “She she died, I lost everything.”
Saronjic, a thin man with a striking face and charcoal beard, met Carmen late last year in the Croatian port of Split as war in that former Yugoslav republic raged between Serb and Croat forces.
A former marine commando with the Yugoslav navy, Saronjic went to Sarajevo to help form the defense forces of this small country — sandwiched between Croatia and Serbia — as tensions mounted.
He had recently left his wife, so Carmen accompanied him. Three sons — two his and one hers from previous marriages — were left with Carmen’s mother in Split.
Love during wartime is said to be the most passionate and also the most tragic. Theirs was no exception.
In April, soon after Serb militias began grabbing chunks of Bosnia, Serb forces arrested the couple as they drove near Stup. He was carrying a walkie-talkie and she some bullets. Twenty-four days later they were released.
“When you are beaten with someone and tortured together, it brings you closer. It makes a terrible bond,” Saronjic said.
The worst, he said, was the psychological terror. Twice, they were told their executions were night. Twice, they were driven blindfolded to a burial ground. Twice, nothing happened.
Serbs exchanged the pair for some Serb prisoners.
A little more than a month later they were officially married.
“I used to watch movies like James Bond that showed that women could do everything,” Carmen said last month. “But when you’re in this, you wish you were back in a normal life. … From time to time, when no one’s looking, I cry a bit.”
Now her husband is crying.
“Last night I dreamed about her,” he said. “She came to me and said, ‘Never go to a dangerous place.’ She said,’I don’t want to lose you.'”
Wounded in Serb attack, paralyzed Bosniak Child Irma Hadzimuratovic Dies
Blood spattered body of Irma Hadzimuratovic after she was wounded by Serb shrapnel
A five-year-old Bosniak girl who was severely injured in the fighting in Bosnia has been flown to Britain for treatment. Irma Hadzimuratovic whose suffering has come to symbolise the agony of the Bosnian Genocide was rescued from Sarajevo and taken to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London, UK.
She was seriously injured by a Serbian mortar bomb in Sarajevo which killed her mother and 14 others in a market square in Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo. She was close to death before the British Government arranged to fly her to the UK. The RAF flew her out of Sarajevo with her father, Ramis, and three-year old sister. Read the rest of this entry »
Serbs Kill Bosnian Foreign Minister, Take UN Peacekeepers as Hostages
Gettysburg Times
29 May 1995.
By George Jahn
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Bosnia’s foreign minister and three colleagues were killed Sunday when rebel Serbs shot down their helicopter near the Bosnian-Croatian border. Serbs, defying escalating global condemnation, also seized more U.N. peacekeepers.
Croatian Serb forces claimed responsibility for downing the chopper, the Croatian Serb news agency ISKRA reported. The helicopter had traveled 10 miles from the besieged Bosnian government-held enclave of Bihac when it crashed just across the Croatian border.
Bosnian Serbs, confident U.N. hostages would shield them from a repeat of last week’s NATO air raids on ammunition dumps, seized 33 more peacekeepers, all British, near Gorazde in eastern Bosnia. Five of the captured peacekeepers were later injured in a car accident, Bosnian Serb TV said.
By nightfall, the Serbs held 317 U.N. personnel, the U.N. said, including more than 200 peacekeepers, most of them French, surrounded near Sarajevo and 30 U.N. monitors, some of whom were chained to potential NATO targets.
As the Serbs upped the stakes, frustrated U.N. officials demanded their masters in the world’s capitals tell them what to do: stand tough or back away in the most humiliating retreat of the United Nations’ 50-year history. Read the rest of this entry »
At least 11 Dead, 30 injured in Serb shelling of Bosnia soccer field
The Daily Union
Junction City, Kansas
By MAUD S. BEELMAN
1 June 1993.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — At least 11 people were killed and 40 wounded today when two shells slammed into a crowd watching a soccer match in a Sarajevo suburb, hospital officials said.
The attack appeared to be one of the worst on civilians in the besieged Bosnian capital since the so-called “bread-line massacre” one year ago, when 16 people were killed in the center of Sarajevo while waiting in line for bread.
Sarajevo has been under relentless assault by Serbian rebel forces for nearly 14 months. Read the rest of this entry »
US & Allies Devise Plan for Air Strikes Against Serbs in Bosnia
The Milwaukee Journal
8 February 1994.
“All those who are depriving us of this natural right to self-defense will be considered accomplices in this crime.” – Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic
The United States and its NATO allies essentially have completed their military planning for air strikes over Bosnia, but the Pentagon remains leery of such a move because of the serious risks involved, US officials say.
Defense Secretary William Perry, while acknowledging that air strikes were “among the options” being considered by the allies, said Monday, “we’re trying to … minimize the problems and the limitations.”
The Pentagon, acting on a request from the White House, drew up a full-fledged mission plan in August, defense analysts said. It includes a list of aircraft and crews that would be needed and a wide choice of targets, depending on the military objectives. Read the rest of this entry »
Serbs Continue to Slaughter Bosniak Children in Sarajevo
Six children Killed in shelling on Sarajevo
The Southeast Missourian, p.5A
23 January 1994.
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina — The sun glistened on new snow, and after a week of relative quiet in Bosnia’s besieged capital, children were out sledding and skating. Then the shells slammed down Saturday.
Six children died, hospital and morgue workers said. At least three children-suffered serious wounds and one adult was injured.
Parents frantically got their children off the streets. Although there was no sustained bombardment, the Bosniak-led government immediately put the city back on general alert, a warning for people to stay indoors.
In Alipasino Polje, the western Sarajevo neighbourhood where the deaths occurred, witnesses said at least four shells exploded around 1 p.m. Scores of children were outside sledding on snowy hills and skating in the icy streets. Read the rest of this entry »
Genocide in Bosnia 