Sarajevo Commemorates Anniversary of Market Massacre

Representatives of war victims’ associations, political representatives of the Sarajevo Canton and Sarajevo municipalities and Bosnian state presidency member Zeljko Komsic were among those who laid flowers next to the memorial plaque.

As well as the 43 people who were killed when the market was struck by a shell fired by Bosnian Serb forces besieging the city, 84 people were injured.

Sixty-eight people were also killed in a previous shelling of the same market in February 1994.

Eyewitness Jasim Koso recalled how he heard a projectile being fired at around 11.15am on the day of the 1995 massacre, but did not know it would fall on the market “where many people had come to buy groceries”.

“I saw what happened, there were so many dead and wounded people. I was standing there as if I had not been wounded,” Koso said.

“I did not realise I was hit, but there was blood in my shoes. They transported me to hospital together with two dead women in a white [Volkswagen] Caddy,” he added.

The youngest survivor of the massacre, Damir Malagic, who was 15 at the time, recalled how he and his two friends were selling candles at the market on the day of the massacre.

Both his friends were killed.

“I could have died too. I stayed at the door [of the market]… I saw people lying [on the floor], heard them screaming,” Malagic said.

The Hague Tribunal convicted the former commanders of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, Stanislav Galic and Dragomir Milosevic, of shelling Sarajevo during the siege.

Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic was also convicted of terrorising Sarajevo during the siege with a campaign of shelling and sniper attacks, among other crimes.

Former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic was convicted of the same offence under a first-instance verdict, but is now appealing.