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Sarajevo Remembers Bread Queue Attack
SARAJEVO, May 27 (Reuters) - Sarajevans on Monday unveiled a plaque to victims of the mortar bombing of a bread queue in 1992, the first in a series of massacres which finally triggered outside military intervention in the Bosnian war. Seventeen people were killed on the spot that day and another 119 were wounded, several of whom later died. Televised images of the grisly aftermath went around the world, showing a narrow pedestrian way littered with torn corpses, pools of blood and people with shattered limbs dangling as they were carried to hospital.
About 200 people bearing flowers gathered on Monday around the rosette impact the mortar bomb left in the pavement on May 27, 1992. "This plaque will remind me always of all the people killed in this massacre and all the other massacres which followed it while the world stood and watched," said Jusuf Topalovic, 70, tears gleaming in his eyes. "Unfortunately, the massacres did not stop at this one. It was only a prelude to worse ones."
The international community briefly discussed military intervention after the bread queue shelling but momentum quickly died after French President Francois Mitterrand visited the city in June and relief flights began landing in Sarajevo. Humanitarian rather than military assistance became the accepted international prescription for Bosnia and its capital, except when new massacres provoked such outrage that world leaders were eventually forced to change course.
A mortar bomb which landed in an outdoor market in Sarajevo on February 5, 1994, killed 68 and wounded 200 and led to the creation of a heavy weapons exclusion zone around the city, a zone which later collapsed.
Another mortar bomb landed outside a covered market on August 28, 1995, killing 37 and wounding 85. Among the dead was Jusuf Topalovic's only son. That incident triggered several weeks of NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces and ultim,ately led to the end of the war through a peace agreement signed last December.
As a violinist played Albinoni's Adagio on Monday, victims' relatives and friends walked past the plaque and placed bouqets of flowers underneath it. "May there be rest for souls of the dead. Say a prayer,
remember and warn," the inscription read.
Beba Asceric, 44, wept as the plaque was uncovered by city officials. "I've been waiting for this for so long. This is for my brother and for all innocent people who were killed in this city," she said. A 15-year old high school student, Imelda, held a rose in her hand and prayed in front of the memorial.
"I did not know anybody that was hurt in this massacre, but they were all my fellow citizens. We all lived together once and now there are so many fewer of us," she said. More than 10,500 people were killed and 50,000 wounded during the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, according to Bosnian government statistics. Most of the casualties were civilians.
The worst single massacre of the Bosnian war occurred on May 25, 1995, when a Serb shell landed near a strip of cafes in the northern city of Tuzla, killing 71 people and wounding 200.
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