Outdoor markets continued to function throughout the city during the siege, where Sarajevans could buy the necessities at inflated black market prices. Because these markets were a gathering point, the Bosnian Serb forces shelled them on a number of occasions, always with the same results.
A mortar attack on this outdoor market on February 5, 1994 killed 68 people and wounded 200. It was this carnage that finally convinced NATO to begin air strikes on Bosnian Serb artillery positions in the mountains surrounding Sarajevo.
