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Siege of Sarajevo

The battle for and siege of the city of Sarajevo, now in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), but then part of Yugoslavia began on April 5 1992, the day before the European Community recognized BiH as an independent state.

Spontaneous peace marches took place, involving thousands of people taking to the streets, with the largest group of protestors heading for the Parliament building and other government buildings reportedly seized by Serb forces. Unidentified gunmen were then reported to have fired into the crowd, with one protestor confirmed dead.

The subsequent siege and relentless bombardment from the hills surrounding Sarajevo took an enormous physical toll on the city and its inhabitants, with estimates of nearly 10,000 people having been killed or reported missing in the city, including over 1,500 children, and 56,000 persons wounded, including nearly 15,000 children.

Some estimates report an average of approximately 329 shell impacts per day during the course of the siege, with a high of 3,777 shell impacts on 22 July 1993. This shellfire has caused extensive damage to the city's structures, including civilian and cultural property.

On February 29, 1996, the Bosnian government declared that the siege of Sarajevo was over.

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