Remzija Aljukic’s eyes were open and he was moving fitfully on the stretcher as his two brothers rushed him into Sarajevo’s Kosevo Hospital, just 500 yards from the Bosnian army position where he had been shot by a Serb sniper. The bullet barely left a mark–just a small, neat entrance wound above his right hip, and the brothers hoped he might survive. He died five minutes later, as the brothers waited outside the trauma unit. A surgeon tried to pound his heart back to life, then gave up. For the doctors, watching a Bosnian soldier die was nothing unusual; most days anywhere from 15 to 30 people die of war wounds in the hospital. But the victims’ relatives often can’t contain their grief. So it was with the Aljukic brothers, who looked into the trauma unit just as a nurse was pulling a sheet over the body. They ran in screaming, “Do something!” One of the brothers vainly tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Embarrassed, members of the medical team left the room one by one, until only a single doctor remained. After half an hour, an orderly wheeled Remzija Aljukic’s broken body to the morgue.
