Massacre in the Market

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

A rare stillness suffused Saturday morning in Sarajevo. With the guns silent for a moment, parents gathered up their hungry children and headed for the market to barter for what meager supplies of food and clothing had made it through Serbian lines. Saturday is traditionally the busiest shopping day in the besieged city, and a sense of normality emerged from the bustle of activity in Sarajevo's main marketplace.

But peace is a luxury that cannot be bought, that is not available anywhere in this star-crossed country. When it appears, it is quickly unmasked as an illusion. And last week, somewhere outside the city, somebody aimed a mortar at the center of the crowded market, dropped a 120-mm round into the tube and fired. The shell slammed into a table crowded with shoppers and exploded with a concussive whump that echoed off the buildings surrounding the square. The force of the explosion twisted tables, shattered glass and ripped the canvas used to cover stalls.

When the ambulances arrived, they found bodies -- and pieces of bodies -- scattered everywhere. Several had been decapitated by shards of flying steel. Eight were so badly mangled it was impossible to tell if they had been men or women. The dead were loaded into cars and pickups and even a dump truck, hastily transformed into a hearse. Rescue workers dragged the wounded out on blankets and torn canvas, but the hospitals, already crowded with victims from a shelling the day before in nearby Dobrinja, were overwhelmed. The wounded lay in blood-spattered hallways, moaning for help.

By Saturday night, the death toll had reached 66 and estimates of the number of wounded exceeded 200. It was the worst single attack on the Bosnian capital in the 22-month civil war, and because it was so clearly aimed at civilians, it seemed the most cold-blooded. Although it was not immediately clear where the shell was fired from, and although the Serbs denied responsibility, the Bosnian Muslims wasted no time blaming them. "They're not interested in killing our soldiers," said Vice President Ejup Ganic. "They're only interested in killing our people." President Alija Izetbegovic ordered his representatives to break off peace talks with the Serbs, although he said that negotiations scheduled for this week in Geneva should move forward.

International reaction was swift but, as usual, inconclusive. President Clinton denounced the attack and called for a U.N. investigation, saying, "We rule nothing out" in the way of intervention. But Defense Secretary William Perry, in one of his first public pronouncements on Bosnia since confirmation, said NATO would consider air strikes only if attacks like last week's form a pattern of "strangulation." So far more than 200,000 people are believed dead or missing in the Bosnian war; 2 million are homeless.

It is possible that Saturday's marketplace massacre was one of those grotesque blunders of war. A cease-fire had gone into effect at 9 that morning in order to let a convoy of refugees leave the city. To minimize the risk of casualties, the convoy was split in two. Three buses had passed the Serb checkpoint and three were being loaded near the marketplace when the attack was launched. Observers speculated that Serb gunmen, seeing the first buses pass, assumed that the cease-fire was over and simply aimed at the biggest crowd they could see. To minimize casualties in the future, the Bosnian Interior Minister decreed that, effective immediately, large crowds would be outlawed in open places in Sarajevo.

With reporting by Edward Barnes/Split and James L. Graff/Tuzla