Bombardment and Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian Genocide in 1993
The Southeast Missourian, p.5A
7 December 1993.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Serb forces shelled the Bosnian capital for five hours Monday, taking aim at shoppers bartering for food and mourners burying their dead. Five people were killed and at least 27 wounded.
It was the heaviest shelling in more than a week and came the day after the first infantry clashes in weeks between Serb forces besieging Sarajevo and the Bosniak-led Bosnian army.
Violence is on the upsurge in the wake of the latest failed efforts to end Bosnia’s 20-month war.
The first of Monday’s shells landed on an outdoor market in a residential area of Sarajevo. Four people died and 16 were wounded. Shoppers scrambled under vendors’ stalls or dashed across the street to the relative safety of an appartement building as the shelling continued.
Mourners at a nearby cemetery, burying a young woman and old man killed last week, hit the ground when they heard the first explosion, then ran for cover amid the gravestones. Moments later shells began landing at the cemetery, Associated Press Photographer Morten Hvaal said. No one was injured at the cemetery.
The rest of the day’s dead and wounded came from elsewhere in the city, which was shelled from around 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bosnian radio said Serbs in the hills ringing Sarajevo were firing tanks and mortars. By sundown, the big guns had quieted.
Ten-year-old Danijel Dorotic was playing with a friend in his family’s sixth-floor apartment when a shell landed in front of the building.
“I heard the explosion and felt pain in my stomach,” he said from his hospital bed, showing where shrapnel sliced his flesh.
“I called Daddy. He came and took me into his arms. He told me not to be afraid, it is just a scratch. I hugged him and it was better then,” the boy said. “Mommy cried. But Daddy carried me out on the street and stopped a van. They took me to hospital, and now everything is fine.”
Since war began, 14,600 children in Sarajevo have been wounded and 1,530 killed, according to the government. In all of Bosnia, more than 200,000 people have died.
The marketplace was crowded with people shopping and trading for food, cigarettes and clothing, trying to survive a second winter of war.
