Sarajevo Slammed By Hundreds Of Shells

Old Town vendors rushed to cover and city residents hid in bomb shelters Tuesday as hundreds of shells slammed into Sarajevo in the worst fighting in two years.

Battles for the city’s front lines claimed the lives of the innocent, including a 12-year-old girl unlucky enough to be outside when government forces and besieging Serbs began battling for five areas of Sarajevo.

Clouds of smoke wafted over the Bosnian capital during a day in which shells began falling from the sky at a rate of up to three a minute. An armored vehicle manned by Russian peacekeepers was set afire by heavy machine-gun fire; the occupants escaped without casualties.

By nightfall, 10 hours after the shelling began, officials reported the girl and two others dead and 17 wounded - latest victims of a conflict that has left 200,000 people dead or missing since Bosnia seceded from the former Yugoslav federation in 1992.