Siege of Sarajevo 1996
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 9 January 1996 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1996 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | Post-1945 (1946 onwards) | derived from year |
| Location | Bosnia and Herzegovina | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Siege of Sarajevo | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 43.8556, 18.4036 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The siege of Sarajevo (Serbo-Croatian: Опсада Сарајева, Opsada Sarajeva) was a prolonged military blockade of Sarajevo, the capital of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the ethnically charged Bosnian War. The city was initially besieged by the Yugoslav People's Army, before they were replaced by elements of the newly-formed Army of Republika Srpska. Lasting from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 (1,425 days), the siege was three times longer than the Battle of Stalingrad and more than a year longer than the siege of Leningrad, making it the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.
When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia after the 1992 Bosnian independence referendum, the Bosnian Serbs—whose strategic goal was to create a new Bosnian Serb state of Republika Srpska (RS) that would include Bosniak-majority areas—encircled Sarajevo with an initial siege force of 13,000 stationed in the surrounding hills. From there they blockaded the city, and assaulted it with artillery, tanks, and small arms including snipers, dropping at least 500,000 bombs.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Sarajevo (revision 1378607795), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Browse more: battles in Bosnia and Herzegovina · Europe · Post-1945 battles