Word: checkpoints
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...massacre was one of those grotesque blunders of war. A cease-fire had gone into effect at 9 that morning in order to let a convoy of refugees leave the city. To minimize the risk of casualties, the convoy was split in two. Three buses had passed the Serb checkpoint and three were being loaded near the marketplace when the attack was launched. Observers speculated that Serb gunmen, seeing the first buses pass, assumed that the cease-fire was over and simply aimed at the biggest crowd they could see. To minimize casualties in the future, the Bosnian Interior Minister...
...independence. But in a city where foreigners are now targeted for death by Islamic militants, few people were surprised when a young man walked into Louzoum's shop in broad daylight last week and shot him dead, just a few hundred yards from a police checkpoint. His murder mocked government claims that "security and order are being restored...
...Serb had died in a vehicle finally sent by his command. Angered by the loss and fueled by slivovitz, the plum brandy that is ubiquitous here, the remaining Serbs turned on the Canadians. "There were about four guys," said Petrokilis. "They ordered two of our guys out of the checkpoint and the other nine out of the bunker. Everyone was taken outside in a group. None of our guys knew what the - Serbs were saying, but their gestures were aggressive and angry. They fired to the left and to the right of our troops. I can't in all good...
...little less than an hour later, the incident ended when a Serb officer arrived to calm down his men, and the Canadians pulled out of the checkpoint. Back at their base, the 11 soldiers were given a "critical-incident-stress debriefing" and 48 hours off -- all standard procedure, said Petrokilis...
...Canadians did not reoccupy the checkpoint, but the U.N. was determined to play down the ordeal. "This is a minor incident," said Major Idesbald van Biesebroeck, spokesman for the United Nations Protection Force in Sarajevo. Only in Bosnia, where 10,000 peacekeepers walk the thin line between being humanitarians and combatants, could such treatment of U.N. troops be considered a minor incident. "Repetition creates a sense of ordinariness," said Petrokilis. "Of course, what the Bosnian Serbs did here was inexcusable. But similar things happen all the time on all sides -- just pick your belligerent...