SARAJEVO, Oct 13: A Bosnian museum that survived two world wars and the siege of Sarajevo will close to the public on Friday because of a lack of cash for salaries and winter heating, officials said on Wednesday.

"Until the situation is resolved, the Regional Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina will remain closed," acting director Aisa Softic told a news conference. The Regional Museum, a Sarajevo landmark, opened in 1888 under the Austria-Hungarian Empire which occupied Bosnia in 1876, and was the biggest such institution in the former Yugoslavia with about four million exhibits.

It survived both world wars and its employees managed to preserve all the exhibits through the constant shelling and blackouts of the 43-month Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s.

Among the museum's most valuable artefacts is the Sarajevo Haggadah, a famous illuminated Jewish holy book from the 14th century that was brought to Sarajevo by Spanish Jews who found sanctuary in the city in the 16th century.

A state institution for more than a century, the museum lost its status in the ethnically-divided country after the 1992-95 war and its maintenance was left to Sarajevo authorities and the government of the Muslim-Croat federation. Postwar Bosnia's Serb Republic is not interested in funding a cultural institution based in Sarajevo. - Reuters