…9:02…Sarajevo….Snipers Alley just outside the Holiday Inn Hotel. Thirty years ago, during the siege that lasted four years, Snipers Alley ran along the main boulevard into and out of Sarajevo. Sarajevo is a long and narrow city that sits in a valley with mountains on each side. Serbian snipers were positioned in the high-rise buildings along the road and mountains a little further away. They picked off anything that moved in the street or who they could see in the windows of the apartments. Civilians still had to move around the city to survive. They risked their lives each time they stepped outside to get water, food, or wood to burn for heat.
What seemed insane but was reality, they either ran down a street to hide behind an obstacle, like a destroyed tram or car, or would wait for United Nations armored vehicles and walk behind them, using them as shields. It was luck that kept people from dying in the street. In most cases, if someone was shot, the body couldn’t be retrieved easily since the snipers would then prey on the people trying to recover the body. It was barbaric.
