Sarajevo

Timothy Gibson joined the Air Force right after his graduation from Annapolis High School because he thought it would be a good way to start his life. Ironically, he found himself helping to save lives in war-torn Sarajevo.In early July, the U.S. military began airlifting food and other humanitarian aid to almost a quarter of a million people in and around the besieged Bosnian capital as part of Operation Provide Promise.Sgt. Gibson, 24, stationed at Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany, as an air cargo specialist, was responsible for getting the food and medicine off the ground and to Sarajevo, as quickly as possible.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- As the threat of military strikes against rebel Serbs grew yesterday, doctors in Sarajevo hospitals rushed to prepare critically wounded or ill patients for airlifts to Western hospitals this weekend.If there are air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, .. the city's only airport will almost certainly close for an indefinite period.Forty-one patients will leave Sarajevo because Western nations moved by the plight of a 5-year-old girl responded to international publicity to help other victims.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The commander of United Nations forces in Bosnia departs from Sarajevo tomorrow, leaving behind an isolated city that is shivering cold but safer than when he arrived, and a Bosnian government that despises him.Mercurial, sharp-tongued and relentlessly assertive, the commander, Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Rose of Britain, is not a man to leave people indifferent. His one-year assignment here has been a roller coaster, lurching between triumph and disaster.His greatest achievement was combining the United Nations and NATO in an operation last February that pushed back the Serbian artillery that had long shelled Sarajevo.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- After two orphans were killed in a sniper attack on a bus bound for Germany Saturday night, the surviving young refugees resumed their journey yesterday and immediately fell afoul of the "ethnic cleansing" policies of the Serbian nationalists besieging this city.The children, many of them infants and all younger than 4 years old, were secured to the bench seats of an old intercity bus with torn sheets when automatic rifle fire burst out at dusk as the bus traveled a stretch of a cross-city boulevard known to Sarajevans as "Sniper Alley."

UNITED NATIONS, New York -- The Clinton administration, aroused by the prospect of a "humanitarian disaster" in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, is considering a number of reactions, including the dispatch of U.S. troops in an enlarged ground force to save the city, according to senior U.S. officials.While one senior official said the prospect of U.S. ground forces being sent was "hypothetical," the mere consideration of such an option marks a major turn in U.S. policy toward the Balkans.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- French President Francois Mitterrand staged a daring visit to embattled Sarajevo yesterday and vowed to break a Serbian blockade threatening the city's 300,000 trapped citizens with starvation.Hours later, Serbian forces relinquished control of Sarajevo's shattered airport to United Nations peacekeepers so it can be reopened for humanitarian relief flights, the Tanjug news agency reported.The first such flights, two French air force transport planes, each loaded with 6.5 tons of food and medicine, landed last night in Split on Croatia's Adriatic coast and planned to fly into the ravaged capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina this morning.

Sarajevo -- As I prepare for my first winter in Sarajevo, my heart goes out to those who are now dreading their third in this war. Last spring they had hope. The end of the shelling after the market massacre in March, improvements in utilities and the opening of a road into the city brought a semblance of normality to Sarajevo. People socialized over coffee or beer in the local cafes, and the markets were full of fresh fruits, vegetables and meats.All that has changed. The increase in sniping over the past month, the cutting of electricity, water and gas, and the closing of the one road into the city have suffocated any sense of hope allowed to bloom last spring.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The United Nations food convoy inches toward this city from Split on the Adriatic coast along a tortuous mountain route that is often more trail than road and never seems to run even 100 yards in a straight line.At the United Nations in New York, at a peace conference in London and at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and in many capitals of the world, this is the route they are discussing as one of the land corridors that should be kept open for humanitarian aid to besieged Bosnia.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- After nearly two years of unrelenting slaughter, siege and wartime nastiness here, who'd think there would still be enough time and energy for plain old murder? Or enough cool calculation to keep filing lawsuits?Yet spurned lovers still shoot each other dead in Sarajevo doorways. Drinkers who argue politics still come to fatal blows. Angry spouses still go for the jugular, or worse. Lawyers not only keep filing suits -- one has won a multimillion-dollar judgment.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The white blossoms of plum trees now dot the surrounding hills instead of the smoke of artillery blasts, and the few gunshots that occasionally crackle through the air are often drowned out by the roar of a NATO jet.Water runs from the tap a few hours a day, and most of the time there is electricity. Spring gardens are sprouting fresh vegetables. The trams are running. And the price of such precious items as sugar and coffee has come down.But the siege of Sarajevo continues.