Greetings from Balkan 🙂
Yeah, sorry, I usually do not mention city in on line discussions, because numerous reasons, but in that time there were several cities in similar situation.
Of course, people attempted to leave the city, but it was very hard to do it, you could leave it practicaly goung trough the enemy lines gaps, or over very hard mountain road (again trough gaps in lines and mine fields). Other solution was to use some of the warlords groups for smuggling out but no guaranties there for anything.
I am still in the same region here, that is one of the reasons why I kept some names away from on line mentioning.