Bosnia marks anniversary of 1995 Sarajevo market massacre

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) – Bosnians gathered Sunday to commemorate the 27th anniversary of a massacre that claimed 43 lives and injured nearly 84 in Sarajevo.

The 1995 Markale marketplace shelling was one of the biggest massacres committed during the siege of Sarajevo from April 1992 to December 1995.

It was the second mortar attack that targeted the market in the city. The first had killed 68 people and injured 144 others on Feb. 5, 1994.

Amerisa Ahmetovic, who was injured in the 1995 attack, said she lost her leg in the shelling and is still haunted by the attack.

Sefika Skorupan, a survivor, recalled the horror she felt when she saw people who were taken to hospitals with their arms, leg, and heads ripped off.

Participants of the commemoration ceremony – including family members of the victims, survivors and Bosnian politicians – prayed for the dead.

In Sarajevo, which was besieged for 44 months during the war, 11,541 people, including 1601 children, were killed.

War crimes

The shelling is among the crimes former Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic was found guilty of committing during his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal.

The UN court in The Hague also sentenced former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic to life in prison for spreading terror among civilians in the capital Sarajevo and other parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina in an attempt to clear non-Serbs from certain territories.

He was also found to have had “significant responsibility” for the 1995 genocide of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.

For the Markale massacres, the court sentenced Dragoslav Milosevic, commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska, to 29 years in prison.