These recordings were made by a Polish Military Observer in the Rainbow Hotel in the morning of 14 May 1992. The hotel suffered a direct hit that day and around 20 UN vehicles in the parking lot were destroyed.
Most of the UN staff had been assembled in the Rainbow Hotel – as it was considered safer, but I had decided not to leave the PTT Building even when I was off-duty.
While watching the shelling around the Rainbow Hotel, a sniper bullet came through the window 50cm above my head a split second after I shot this picture. I believe the sniper was firing from the Oslobodenje building (the dark building on the left), which was relatively undamaged at the time – a range of around 600 meters.
The following day the UN evacuated Sarajevo. I drove one of the trucks in the convoy to Beograd, and it took us 15 hours to get there – normally a 4-5 hour drive, we drove through many roadblocks some of which were heavily mined. Going through Tuzla, we passed the scenes of very recent fighting.
Please note that the recordings take about 10 seconds to begin playing.
The first recording begins at 05:15 in the morning.
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The third recording begins at 06:25 and ends with a direct hit to the building.
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Some more photos from my time in the Former Yugoslavia.
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