Yugoslav Forces Shell Dubrovnik, Historic Port City, for First Time

Federal artillery and gunboats shelled the historic center of Dubrovnik for the first time Wednesday, hitting medieval and Renaissance sites in the walled city center, reports and witnesses said.

At least three civilians were killed and two wounded during the day as federal forces rained more than 1,000 shells on homes and hotels--some packed with refugees--around the medieval Adriatic port, Croatian defense officials said. A city hospital also was hit, they said.

Croatian Radio said that 60,000 people are trapped in the city with little or no electricity, communications or water. A Yugoslav naval blockade is permitting only one ferry a day to leave with refugees, the radio said.

The fierce assault on Dubrovnik, a tourist mecca and cultural treasure some have compared to Venice, came hours after Yugoslav army troops reported mortar and sniper attacks against their positions in Kupari, a resort just south of Dubrovnik that they had entered Tuesday.

The news agency Tanjug later said the army withdrew from Kupari to “a safer position” after suffering unspecified heavy casualties. The attacks on the heart of Dubrovnik, which escaped significant damage during World War II, apparently were in retaliation for the army’s defeat in Kupari.

Dubrovnik has no great military significance but, like Vukovar in eastern Croatia, has great symbolic importance. Croats see it as a symbol of European culture and of the wealth that an independent Croatia could reap from tourism.

Croatia declared independence along with Slovenia on June 25, but Croatia’s ethnic Serbian minority wants no part of an independent Croatia. The federal army, with a Serb-dominated officer corps, has sided with the Serbian rebels. More than 1,000 people have died in the fighting.

Simon Smits, a spokesman for European Community truce monitors in Zagreb, said an EC team in Dubrovnik confirmed that the old town was hit by heavy shelling.

Earlier Wednesday, air-raid sirens also sounded in Zagreb, but no bombing was reported. It was the first alert in Croatia’s capital since last Thursday, when federal forces launched strong attacks on the outskirts of Dubrovnik and Croatian strongholds in the eastern part of Croatia.

Croatian Radio said more than 2,000 mortar shells rained down on the Danube town of Vukovar, wounding 20 civilians and eight Croatian militia fighters. The town has been under siege for two months by the federal army and Serbian militants.