Bosnian Romeo and Juliet Slain

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  Two lovers lie dead on the banks of Sarajevo’s Miljacka River, locked in a final embrace.

For days they have sprawled near the Vrbana bridge in a wasteland of shell-blasted rubble, downed tree branches and dangling power lines.

So dangerous is the area, no one has dared recover their bodies.

Bosko Brckic and Admira Ismic, both 25, were shot to death Wednesday trying to escape the besieged Bosnian capital for Serbia.

Sweethearts since high school, he was a Serb and she a Muslim.

“They were shot at the same time, but he fell instantly and she was still alive,” recounts Dino, a soldier who saw the couple trying to cross from government territory to rebel Serb positions.

“She crawled over and hugged him and they died like that, in each other’s arms.”

Squinting through a hole in the sandbagged wall of a bombed-out building, Dino points to where the two are lying amid the debris of Bosnia’s 14-month civil war.

Bosko is face down on the pavement, right arm bent awkwardly behind him. Admira lies next to her lover, left arm across his back.

The government side says Serbian soldiers shot the couple, but Serbian forces insist that Bosnian Muslim-led government troops were responsible.

“I don’t care who killed them; I just want their bodies so I can bury them,” says Zijah Ismic, the dead woman’s father. “I don’t want them to rot in no-man’s-land.”

Government and Serbian authorities have discussed the matter but so far are refusing a cease-fire around the bridge to permit recovery of the couple.

The U.N. Protection Force, charged with providing humanitarian assistance in Sarajevo, maintains the bodies are a local issue.

“Everyone is washing their hands in this case, Bosnians and Serbs alike,” the woman’s father says.