Bosnian Serb forces surrounded Sarajevo on 5 April 1992. For nearly four years they shelled the city from the hills and fired on its streets with snipers, while residents lived without regular electricity, water or heat. The Dayton Agreement ended the Bosnian War in December 1995. On 29 February 1996, as Bosnian Serb forces left their positions around the city, the government declared the siege over. By then 13,352 people had been killed, including 5,434 civilians.
The siege lasted from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996, almost four years in all, longer than the siege of Leningrad in the Second World War. Sarajevans learned to run across intersections exposed to snipers. They grew vegetables on balconies and burned furniture and books to keep warm. A tunnel dug under the airport runway became the city's lifeline, bringing in food, fuel and weapons.
The siege left some of the war's defining images. In the 1994 Markale marketplace massacre, a single mortar shell killed dozens of shoppers. A second attack on the same market in August 1995 helped trigger the NATO bombing campaign that pushed the Bosnian Serbs towards Dayton.
The end of the siege did not bring an easy peace. As districts around the city passed to the Bosnian-Croat Federation under the Dayton terms, tens of thousands of Sarajevo Serbs left, some burning their homes behind them. The city that emerged was reunified but deeply changed, and its population had been reshaped by war.