Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 22, 1994 TAG: 9404220199
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times Note: lede
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
NATO's Allied Forces Southern Europe headquarters in Naples, Italy, has recommended a plan that emphasizes airstrikes on a broad menu of targets to include ammunition dumps, command bunkers, supply routes, maintenance facilities and the like, Defense Department officials said.
``Trying to do things with air power alone is very tenuous, and if you're going to do that, you have to go in very overwhelmingly and hit a lot of things and make the world absolutely miserable for the people you're taking on,'' said a Defense official who has reviewed the plan. NATO military
officials in Brussels completed work on the plan Thursday and forwarded it to the alliance's political leadership, the North Atlantic Council, which will consider it today.
Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, suggested on NBC's "Today" show Thursday that before the alliance embarks on a broad air campaign, it needs to consider the implications for the entire U.N. mission in Bosnia. ``If you're going to have an extensive air campaign, you need to get your U.N. personnel out, your humanitarian people out, and leave only those people in there that can protect themselves.''
Rebel Serbs issued a surrender-or-die ultimatum to the leaders of Gorazde on Thursday, threatening to annihilate the 65,000 civilians trapped in the U.N. ``safe haven'' unless the Bosnian government capitulates.
Authorities in Gorazde disregarded the 4 p.m. deadline for surrender.
The ultimatum was hammered home to the hungry and terrified population by a barrage of tank and artillery shells that killed at least 47 people and wounded 143, according to foreign aid workers hunkered in basement shelters in the besieged city.
Two tank shells tore through a makeshift first-aid station near the city hospital that was destroyed a day earlier by wire-guided missiles.
A doctor at the ravaged facility, Ferid Tutic, told reporters in a ham radio broadcast that the overwhelmed hospital staff was able to evacuate only seven of the 35 people trapped inside the smoldering clinic.
``We could still hear screams from within the burning building,'' the anguished doctor said.
Doctors and town officials contacted by ham radio said Thursday's bombardment was the worst of the three-week Serb offensive against the besieged Muslim enclave.
``Counting the dead and wounded doesn't make sense any more,'' said Esad Ohranovic, a local official. Dr. Goran Aksamija, a surgeon at the hospital, appealed to doctors, surgeons and intellectuals around the world to go on a 24-hour strike over the situation in Gorazde.
``As a surgeon, I get used to the blood, but this, what is happening here I cannot describe,'' he said. ``I believe that, if I survive this, I will not be able to do this job ever again.''
by CNB