Worst Fighting Yet Racks Bosnia’s Capital

Fighting intensified in Sarajevo on Tuesday as Serbs set buildings ablaze and pounded the host city of the 1984 Winter Olympics with machine-gun and mortar fire.

Ambulances rushed through deserted streets in this capital city of 600,000. At least 21 people were reported injured, and three bodies were seen on one street.

U.N. peacekeepers, brought in to impose a cease-fire in neighboring Croatia but based in Sarajevo, drove armored vehicles through the sniper-infested streets to try to rescue the wounded. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the peacekeepers have no intention of being dislodged.

“The headquarters will remain in Sarajevo until the violence starts being directly aimed at it,” he told reporters at the heavily guarded building.

The violence was the worst since Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Muslims and Croats voted for independence from Yugoslavia in a referendum at the beginning of March, setting off armed resistance from its Serbs.

“This is the most difficult and dramatic day in Sarajevo’s long history,” local radio proclaimed as Serbs battled Muslims in western sectors of the city.

In Bonn, German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said he and U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III are discussing “steps and measures . . . if the so-called ‘Yugoslav People’s Army’ doesn’t stop its military actions against the populace.”

Genscher’s office did not say what measures are being considered.