June 1, 1993 was a balmy day in Sarajevo. After months of living in fear of attacks from Bosniak Serbs, locals decided to host a small football game to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in the suburb of Dobrinja.
The West had been watching the siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina for months – the small city, surrounded by four mountains, had hosted the Winter Olympic Games only nine years earlier.
In 1992, it became warzone, with snipers firing at civilians from high rise buildings first constructed for the Olympic Games.
Terror had descended on the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Locals chose a small parking lot surrounded by three apartment buildings and a hill, hoping the cover on all sides would protect from any attacks. Soldiers from the Army of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina were present.
At 10am, a shell landed as children kicked the ball back and forth, throwing the football game into chaos.
A second shell landed and injured more as frantic attendees were trying to triage victims of the first explosion.
Pools of blood stained the makeshift football pitch. 13 people – four of them children – were killed, with 133 others injured in the indiscriminate attack.
One of the dead was 11-year-old Marko Zizic, who had gone to watch the game with his friends.
His uncle, Dalibor Ballian, told Balkan Transitional Justice: ‘There was a VW car, and my nephew was sitting on it when a piece of shrapnel hit him in his artery.
‘His sister watched all that from their window. He was bleeding and she put him into a car and drove him to the hospital.’
Global reaction
Western media reported on the attack with fervor and outrage. The Guardian wrote an article titled ‘Blood and tears end a soccer game that no one could win’.
Neven Andjelic, Assistant Professor in International Relations and Human Rights at the University of Bologna had been in his native Sarajevo until February 1993 before fleeing the besieged city.
Speaking of the countless civilian tragedies which befell citizens of Sarajevo during the siege, he told Metro.co.uk: ‘At the time, it was shocking because it was perhaps the first war that was almost live broadcast on western media in which the West did not have a side.
‘This was presenting the suffering of people to people as observers, who were not involved in the conflict.
‘But is it possible not to be involved when you are observing human suffering?’
During the siege, Sarajevo’s electric, gas and water supplies were cut off – leaving those within the city with no access to vital infrastructure.
Similar tactics are still being used in today’s conflicts. Around 35,000 people have died in Gaza since Israel launched military operations in response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which killed more than 1,000 in Israel.
Citizens in Ukraine have had vital infrastructure cut off as Russian troops continue to wage war in their territory.
Having witnessed such a siege on a city he lived in, Mr Andjelic told Metro.co.uk: ‘The problem is depersonalising tragedies that are affecting individuals human beings.
‘You cannot consider a certain number affordable to lose – it’s an individual tragedy that affects a huge number of people.’
Searching for justice
Former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, Stanislav Galic, were both found guilty at a Hague Tribunal for the attack.
Despite this guilty verdict, neither have faced justice or served time.
Mr Andjelic said that while these verdicts from international courts provide an opportunity for closure of families of victims of such attacks, they don’t provide justice – or bring the victims back to life.
He added: ‘Such incidents were widespread during the time of the siege of Sarajevo – and it does not seem that humanity has learned anything since.’
The siege ended in 1995, leaving 13,952 people dead. 5,434 of these casualties were civilians.
The number is shocking to this day, Mr Andjelic said, but minor when compared to casualties seen in the Middle East, Ukraine and Central Africa.
‘Perhaps this is the warring element: technological advances of military equipment are causing greater and greater tragedy for ordinary people,’ he said.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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