Operation Irma

Operation Irma was the name applied to a series of airlifts of injured civilians from Bosnia and Hercegovina during the Siege of Sarajevo. The airlifts were initiated after the wounding of five-year-old Irma Hadžimuratović attracted international media attention. The programme was reported to have evacuated hundreds of Sarajevans during the second half 1993, but attracted significant controversy concerning its scale, evacuee selection criteria, and the motivations of the western European governments and press that inspired it.

The Bosnian War erupted in March 1992, following Bosnia and Hercegovina's declaration of independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In April 1992, Bosnian Serb forces, representing the Republika Srpska and the Yugoslav People's Army, took up positions in the areas surrounding the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and initiated a siege that was to last for four years. The siege was characterized by sniper fire and shelling directed at the city's buildings and infrastructure and at civilian residents of the city. Reports showed that between the beginning of the siege and November 1992, an average of eight persons were killed and 44 wounded in Sarajevo per day.

On 30 July 1993, a mortar shell fired by Bosnian Serb troops hit a Sarajevo neighbourhood, injuring five-year-old Irma Hadžimuratović and killing several others, including her mother. Sarajevo's overstretched Koševo hospital was unable to provide adequate treatment for the injuries Irma received to her spine, head and abdomen. She developed bacterial meningitis as a result. Edo Jaganjac, the surgeon treating Hadžimuratović, tried unsuccessfully to have her evacuated on a UN relief flight. He then resorted to distributing her photograph among foreign journalists in Sarajevo. Several picked up Irma's story, giving it widespread coverage in the international (and especially the British) press. On the evening of 8 August, BBC news led with coverage of Irma's injuries. On 9 August, British Prime Minister John Major personally intervened, dispatching an RAF Hercules to airlift Irma to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital.

...
Wikipedia