Villagers flee advancing Serbs in Gorazde

Villagers flee advancing Serbs in Gorazde

SARAJEVO (Reuter): Hundreds of villagers fled Serb forces pushing deeper into the Bosnian enclave of Gorazde yesterday in defiance of a United Nations warning to pull back or face retaliation.

The main UN aid agency reported refugees whose homes were burning in southern parts of the besieged east Bosnian enclave poured into the Gorazde township which was hit by Serb shells yesterday morning.

Peter Kessler of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said 800 women, children and old people has demonstrated outside the agency's Goradze office for protection and added:

"The overall situation is that of panic. People are in a frenzy as there are rumors and reports of people being killed in the overrun villages. Refugees are bringing stories of decapitation."

There was no independent confirmation of atrocities but the continued attacks undermined claims by UN peacekeepers that Serbs would not try to capture the enclave, a UN "safe haven" sheltering 65,000 Moslem civilians.

At least 99 Moslems have been killed and more than 400 have been wounded in the latest fighting in the enclave, one of only three left to Moslems who were a majority in eastern Bosnia before the civil war began two years ago.

The Bosnian Serb Army (BSA), which turned on Gorazde at the end of March, appears to have captured most of the enclave south of the Drina river which bisects the territory.

A BSA statement said Moslem positions overwhelmed by Serb forces on Saturday included Zupcici, which is five kilometers from Gorazde on the south bank of the Drina.

Drina bridges at nearby Kolovarice, Bacci and Dzindici were destroyed in fighting, forcing refugees to cross the river in boats, according to the UNHCR and the BSA.

UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali ordered UN peacekeepers on Saturday to use all means to force the Serbs to pull back from Gorazde and did not rule out air strikes. NATO commanders have been reluctant to use air power although a similar threat in February broke the Serb siege of Sarajevo.

Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Rose, the commander of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia, said yesterday that air strikes remained an option to drive the Serbs from Gorazde.

Rose, on his way to NATO headquarters in Brussels to discuss tactics, said when asked by a Reuter reporter in the Croatian port of Split if the latest Serb offensive could bring about NATO air strikes, he said: "Well, it may come to that."

UNPROFOR has only a handful of military observers in the Gorazde pocket and no clear idea of what is going on.

Its claims that the Serbs have taken only 7.5 percent of the territory in the pocket and are unlikely to capture it look increasingly threadbare.

Workers in Gorazde for the medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) warned there was a grave danger that it would be overrun and criticized UN inaction

The Serbs on Friday exploited a 24-hour cease-fire to capture a 1,000 meter high hilltop artillery platform overlooking Gorazde's town center. Journalists returning from the area said their territorial gains were considerable in the east and west of the pocket as well as the south.

UNPROFOR rejected Bosnian claims that the Serbs fired chemical shells on Saturday and said the weapons were 120mm smoke mortars that lay down a smoke screen and are not banned by the Geneva Conventions.