Last Despatches: Photographer Who Captured Life and Death in Sarajevo

Salko Hondo, a veteran photojournalist for Oslobodjenje, the Sarajevo-based newspaper that courageously kept on publishing throughout the three-and-a-half-year siege of the city, went on his final assignment on July 16, 1992.

Hondo had been deployed to take pictures of people queueing for water near the marketplace in the Ciglane neighbourhood when a projectile exploded close to him.

"A grenade hit a pillar that was holding up an underpass in Ciglane, and a shower of shrapnel came raining down on him," said Hondo's former work colleague and friend Djuro Kozar, who was in the newsroom that day.

Hondo was identified from his bag, which had the word Oslobodjenje on it.

His wife Nura had received no information about her husband's death, so when he did not come home from work, she went to Ciglane to look for him. When she got there, she found out that he had been killed.

Before going to work, he told her not to worry about their daughter Azra, who lived outside Sarajevo and was expecting a baby at the time.

"It was our last conversation, as he was leaving to photograph that unfortunate water queue… He went out, but he returned and said: 'Nurke, do not worry at all. Azra has all she needs for the baby - not just for one, but for three babies if needs be.' That was the last thing he said," she recalled.

The day after Hondo's death, Oslobodjenje published his obituary.

"Salko Hondo's camera was loaded with a film that marked yet another day of war in Sarajevo. Lethal pieces of shrapnel prevented him from shooting the entire roll and completing yet another daily testimony of the Sarajevo war drama," said the article published on July 17, 1992.

"The film will somehow get to the newsroom today,...