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.

Busovaca massacre in Central Bosnia claims lives of 43 Bosniaks

Bosnian Genocide (1993) - Photograph of the elevated area and the road from Travnik to Busovaca going in that direction. The entrance near the British battalion camp. Photo courtesy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

On the morning of January 25, 1993, Croat forces attacked the Bosniak part of the town of Busovača called Kadića Strana following the January 20 ultimatum. Busovaca is located in central Bosnia, near Zenica.

The attack included shelling from the surrounding hills and a loudspeaker called on Bosniaks to surrender.

Zenica massacre claims 65 casualties in Croat attack

The Zenica massacre shows dead bodies. In the Croat shelling of Zenica on 19 April 1993, 15 civilians were killed and 50 seriously wounded. Bosnian Genocide (1993). Photo courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

On 19 April 1993, Croat forces attacked Zenica. The attack resulted in 65 casualties; 15 Bosniak civilians were killed, while another 50 were seriously injured, many of them paralyzed and blinded from shrapnels. The shells landed in three groups of two, at 12:10 p.m., 12:24 p.m. and 12:29 p.m.

Croats blamed the Serbs for the massacre, but Hague Tribunal discarded such claims during Dario Kordic trial.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) established that the market place in Zenica was shelled by the Croatian Council of Defence (HVO) on April 19, 1993 from the village of Putičevo, 15 kilometres from Zenica, resulting in a massacre.