'A light in the dark' Changing lives of children caught in conflict

Jasmin Elezovic was a youngster when his home became a warzone. It was 1993 and the historic city of Mostar, straddling the Neretva River in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, had become the centre of some of the most vicious fighting of the Bosnian war, which had begun more than a year earlier.

- Annie Kelly

Jasmin and his mother lived with two other families in a small flat in the east of the city, the frontline barely 200 metres away. For nine months Mostar was under siege, split by fighting in which 60,000 people in the east came under relentless bombardment by forces identifying as Croats in the west.

His recollections of that time are scattered and bleak. His father, Ermin, was a soldier away for weeks at a time. Jasmin's life was the thud and screech of artillery attacks, trips to the river for water, and playing with lumps of red-hot shrapnel with friends when he could escape the flat. "I have very few memories of before the war; even now, at 35, I see myself as a survivor of conflict because if you live through war, your life is shaped by it for ever."

Out of that conflict would come the War Child charity and a bakery project that fed a starving city and transformed the families' lives.

War Child, supporting children caught up in conflicts across the globe, is one of this year's Guardian and Observer charity appeal partners, along with Médecins Sans Frontières and Parallel Histories.

Before the war, the Elezovic family were hardworking and enterprising. They ran a coffee shop and Ermin was an engineer. "We had plans, we had dreams just like everyone else," said Ermin. "Then hell came to our lives."