Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 23, 1994 TAG: 9404260109
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA LENGTH: Medium
There was no indication that the announcement late Friday in Belgrade, in which the Serbian leadership agreed to yet another cease-fire, had produced any effect on the ground in Gorazde.
A United Nations report from Gorazde on Friday night said 59 people had been killed and 143 wounded between 8 a.m. and 8:45 p.m. Friday, bringing the confirmed death toll in the three-week offensive to 594 on the government side. U.N. officials stressed that the count is incomplete because the fighting around Gorazde has made collecting all the dead impossible. The Serbs have never released a comprehensive casualty tally.
Though Serbian shelling subsided to 30 impacts between 5 and 7:20 p.m., the artillery barrage took on a new intensity after the NATO ultimatum was announced, the report said.
Another U.N. report from Gorazde said the Serbs had advanced into town on the east side of the Drina River, which bisects the town. The incursion was confirmed by Maj. Rob Annink, spokesman for the United Nations military force in Sarajevo.
The commander of the U.N. military force in Bosnia, Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Rose, has warned repeatedly that he might call for NATO air strikes if the Serbs advanced within the Gorazde city limits. Bosnian Serb leaders had on numerous occasions assured the general that they would not move into the town itself.
The Serbs launched their offensive on Gorazde, which the U.N. Security Council declared a ``safe area'' last year, in an effort to gain control of the main road running through Gorazde, which links Serbia with Serbian-held territories in southern Bosnia. The Serbs have campaigned since April 1992 to uproot the majority Muslim population from the Drina Valley.
Friday's Serbian attacks came in the wake of the bloodiest 24 hours in the offensive, with 99 people killed and 273 wounded, the U.N. reported.
A tank shell exploding inside a makeshift clinic sheltering the wounded killed 28 people Thursday, the report said. Another 10 were killed collecting water at a spring, seven more died in a riverside neighborhood, six on a bridge near the local U.N. headquarters, five near a mosque in Gorazde's old town and four in the suburb of Bacci.
The U.N. report said the Serbian artillery and sniper fire was so severe that it advised against any attempt by the United States and other countries to air-drop food packets into the city.
``Such an air-drop would only draw civilians out into the open where they will be annihilated by every type of fire imaginable,'' the report said.
``Don't read this as an exaggeration. Food is absolutely the least of the worries of the locals.''
The U.N. report described unrelenting small arms and heavy machine-gun fire and added that the Serbs were using machine guns to snipe at civilians who dared go out on the streets.
After using a group of women and children to prevent a United Nations military convoy from entering Gorazde, Serbian leaders Friday delayed the convoy from returning to Sarajevo.
A U.N. spokesman said the commander of the U.N. military force in the former Yugoslavia, Gen. Bertrand de Lapresle, on Friday ordered the 141 troops and medical personnel in the convoy to turn back to Sarajevo from the town of Rogatica.
The Serbian police prevented the convoy from moving, the spokesman said, but U.N. officials in Sarajevo said Friday night that the Serbs had allowed the convoy to depart toward the Bosnian capital.
by CNB