ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604080053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
SOURCE: SAMIR KRILIC ASSOCIATED PRESS
``A DROP OF MY BLOOD was shed so that Bosnia can live,'' read the plaque at the bridge where it all began.
The shots that began the Bosnian war were fired at the Vrbanja Bridge in central Sarajevo. Four years later, on the same bridge, Sarajevans remembered the first victim.
Suada Dilberovic was a medical student taking part in a peace rally when she was killed April 5, 1992, by a bullet fired by one of several gunmen trying to stop the crowd from crossing the bridge.
Although the bridge became better known for the young Muslim-Serb couple who died together there a year later, the city renamed it for Dilberovic and Saturday mounted a brass plaque on the shell-shattered bridge railings.
``A drop of my blood was shed so that Bosnia can live,'' the plaque said, alongside her name. Several of her friends and colleagues among the 100-strong crowd wept.
``It is very sad for me to stand here and still not know why Suada was killed,'' 27-year-old Mirela Hadzic said Friday, laying flowers on the bridge in honor of her friend. ``This whole war is a misery nobody should go through.''
Scores of people were killed by snipers as they tried to cross the bridge during the war.
``This bridge has become a legend during the war,'' noted city official Fahrudin Kulenovic in a speech at Saturday's ceremony.
Perhaps the bridge's best-known victims were a young couple who became known as Sarajevo's Romeo and Juliet.
Bosko Brkic, an ethnic Serb, and Admira Ismic, a Muslim, tried to run away from the horrors of war by dashing across the bridge in May 1993. The 25-year-old lovers were hoping to reach Belgrade, marry, and build a life.
Thirty yards from safety, a machine-gunner killed Bosko. Admira was wounded. She crawled over and cradled him, then died.
For six days, they lay in silent embrace, the area where they fell covered by snipers from both sides.
They, and Dilberovic, are only a few of those who died in the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. More than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared, tens of thousands were wounded and more than 2.5 million Bosnians fled or were driven from their homes.
In Sarajevo alone, 8,017 people were killed, 769 of them children.
Memories of years spent dodging snipers' bullets and running for cover from deadly shell shrapnel remain fresh.
``The fear we lived with for so long cannot be forgotten that easily,'' said Salih Custic, 45. ``Even today, the noise a tram makes as it passes by makes me always jump.''
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Flowers adorn the railings at the Vrbanja Bridge inby CNBcentral Sarajevo where Suada Dilberovic became the first of more
than 8,000 Sarajevans to die in the Bosnian war.