Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Today we're going back to Bosnia in November 1993. The Bosnian War was raging

when a famous Ottoman bridge in the city of Moscow was destroyed.

Louise Hidalgo made this program in 2014.

The bridge was already so badly damaged.

I remember thinking that day that a few drops of rain would be enough to make it fall into the river.

They'd been shelling it all day the day before, and as soon as I started filming the shelling started again and then I think it

was at 16 minutes past 10 a grenade hit the lower left-hand corner of the bridge and

it was gone the it was gone. The bridge was gone.

Eldin Palata was 17. He'd never shot a video before but that day he filmed the only record of the centuries old bridge

being destroyed. When you're looking through the viewfinder of a camera everything

is in black and white and you just keep on filming. But in your

head it feels like a dream. You think if I move my eye away from the camera the

bridge will still be standing there. But it wasn't standing there.

Instead of the elegant arch across the river Neretva,

which had linked East and West Mostar for more than 400 years,

there was now a gaping hole. The whole world

the whole world crumbled at that moment because the old bridge wasn't anything ordinary.

It was something superhuman. I don't know how to describe it in English, you know, it's something eternal.

Like Eldin Pallata, Mira Befram had grown up in Mostar.

The bridge was part of his life.

There were other bridges, the old bridge was just for pedestrians,

...