
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 21, 1994                   TAG: 9403210004
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: VIENNA, AUSTRIA                                LENGTH: Medium

AID REACHES STARVING TOWN AFTER SERBS FLEE BARRICADE

U.N. relief workers brought food and medicine to the starving Bosnian town of Maglaj on Sunday after Bosnian Serb gunmen abandoned a barricade from which they had been blocking humanitarian aid deliveries for months.

Cheering Bosnians, some in tears, lined Maglaj's streets as the convoy rolled in, according to news reports from the city.

"We thought this day would never come. We have suffered so much," said Sophia, a 55-year-old Muslim woman who could not hold back her tears.

U.N. troops and aid workers confirmed their worst suspicions upon arriving at the ruined enclave where more than 100,000 Muslims had been surrounded and thrashed by artillery fire from both Serbian and Croatian nationalist rebels.

"There are no buildings left in Maglaj," said Peter Kessler, the U.N. refugee agency's spokesman in Sarajevo, conveying reports from convoy drivers.

The U.N. witnesses compared the destruction to that of the Croatian town of Vukovar, where a three-month Serbian artillery bombardment in 1991 flattened the suburban community into jagged ruins.

Nine trucks loaded with 80 tons of food and other vital goods reached Maglaj in midafternoon. NATO warplanes roared overhead, ready to strike in case of any moves by Serbian forces.

It was the first ground convoy since Oct. 25 to get into the town. Muslims driven out of surrounding villages have swelled its population to five times its size.

A U.N. relief official who visited the enclave two months ago reported widespread malnutrition and emaciated women and children. Some wore bandages covering wounds suffered while trying to retrieve air-dropped food parcels from surrounding woods that were booby-trapped with mines and raked by snipers.

The Bosnian Serb gunmen loyal to nationalist leader Radovan Karadzic appeared to have fled the barricade south of Maglaj because they had become vulnerable to counterattacks now that Bosnia's Muslims and Croats have reconciled.

Muslims and Croats, who account for two-thirds of Bosnia's 4.4 million prewar population, had initially fought together against the Serbian insurgency that began in 1992. But the erstwhile Bosnian allies took to fighting each other for what scraps of territory were left after Serbs had conquered 70 percent of Bosnia and international mediators seemed resigned to an ethnic partitioning of the country.

by CNB