Aleppo siege conjures memories for Sarajevo and Grozny

Paris: The seige of Aleppo is brutal but far from unprecedented, with the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and Chechnya's regional capital Grozny previously subjected to devastating bombardments.

- Sarajevo: the longest siege -

Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern times when it was pounded by Serb forces for 43 months during a war triggered by the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

The Muslim-dominated city of 350,000 people was besieged from April 1992 until November 1995. Food and electricity supplies were cut, and its civilian population was shelled relentlessly.

More than 10,000 people, including 1,600 children, died during the siege, one of the most dramatic chapters of the Bosnia war that opposed Serbs, Muslims and Croats who had comprised the former republic's multicultural population.

The images and witness accounts of a besieged European capital, under the helpless eyes of UN peacekeepers, shocked the world.

Here are extracts from AFP reports at the time:

- May 20, 1992: "It is too dangerous to carry the injured to hospital, because as soon as you leave the building, you become a target of the many snipers and militias... Only a few telephones work in the neighbourhood and they are our only window on the world", according to a university professor contacted by telephone.

- July 15, 1992: Near a bridge over the river Miljacka, an AFP reporter saw a boy aged between eight and 10 lying by the riverbank, a pool of blood growing under his head. He had just become the victim of a sniper hidden in an apartment block or in one of the many little red-roofed houses that lie on the side of nearby hills.

The sniper continued to fire at two people who tried to reach the body, crawling in a bid to drag it behind a low wall, until the arrival of Bosnian soldiers who responded with volleys of automatic rifle fire.

- February 5, 1994: An attack on Sarajevo's main Markale market kills 68 people. Edi Vagler, 65, says at a friend's funeral: "Of course it is dangerous to be here but... we have been beyond fear for a long time. We are all condemned to die in any event. We just do not know when and how we will be struck down."

- August 28, 1995: More grisly scenes of blood and mangled flesh at the Markale market. An artillery shell slams into the street, killing 35 people and injuring 89 others.

This attack triggered the NATO bombing operation against Bosnian Serb military targets, Operation Deliberate Force, which was crucial in bringing an end to the war.

- Grozny razed -

The capital of Chechnya, a small republic in the Russian Caucasus, was razed to the ground during the winter of 1999-2000 by Russian artillery and air strikes during the battle to reclaim it from Chechen separatists.

The battle for Grozny was spearheaded by then prime minister Vladimir Putin, helping to turn him from an anonymous former KGB officer into the clear successor to take over from Boris Yeltsin after his shock resignation as president on New Year's Eve 1999.

Human Rights Watch charged in December 2000 that the international community had failed to respond to the "carnage" in Chechnya.

On January 9, 2000, Grozny inhabitants who had taken refuge in the Russian republic of Ingushetia told an AFP journalist of hellish conditions in the city's ruins.

- "We lived for three months in a cellar, in the cold and the dark, without light, without heating and without water, we almost never risked going outside, said Rosa Movlayeva, 40.

"Bodies remain in the streets for several days, for up to a week. We could not go out to bury them because of sniper fire. The wounded also died in the street because they could not be rescued."

- Ali Munayev, 28, said: "There are corpses everywhere. People have already started to eat dogs and cats. If you do not want to die of hunger you have no choice."