Sarajevans mark siege anniversary

Sarajevo was paying a subdued tribute this week to the resilience of its citizens who survived the longest military siege in modern history, and commemorating thousands of others who did not.

Many of the survivors said they found the 30th anniversary of the start of the siege of the Bosnian capital particularly hard because they were marking it against the backdrop of what they described as similar suffering being inflicted on civilians in Ukraine by Russia’s occupying army.

Bosnian Serb forces, armed and backed by neighboring Serbia, laid siege to Sarajevo on April 6, 1992, during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. For the next 46 months, about 350,000 residents remained trapped in their multiethnic city, subjected to daily shelling and sniper attacks and cut off from regular access to electricity, food, water, medicine and the outside world. They survived on limited humanitarian supplies provided by the United Nations, drank from wells and foraged for food.