Serbs and Muslims Battle House-to-House in Sarajevo

Serb irregulars fought fierce artillery duels and house-to-house battles with Muslims in Sarajevo on Thursday. A defense official said that virtually the entire city came under bombardment.

Shells hit the presidential building and the headquarters of the U.N. force, wounding a peacekeeper. One report said at least four people died, but the toll likely was much higher.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler expressed concern for the safety of U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia, and for non-Serbs reported to be the target of an ethnic “cleansing” operation by Serb forces.

She said a convoy will try today to bring 600 tons of food to Sarajevo, where people are running out of food and medicine.

The heavy fighting in and around Sarajevo, site of the 1984 Winter Olympics, broke out hours after the United Nations declared it was too dangerous to maintain a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali ruled out military protection for humanitarian aid deliveries and a U.N. operation to secure Sarajevo Airport.

He said the 14,000-person U.N. operation in neighboring Croatia is threatened by the violence.

On Thursday, the Security Council was drafting a demand that the Serb-controlled Yugoslav army and Croatian forces withdraw from Bosnia. The resolution, expected to be adopted Friday, also requests that Boutros-Ghali study how to safeguard relief convoys and possibly secure Sarajevo Airport.

Boutros-Ghali said Thursday that Muslim militias had started the latest fighting, breaking a truce declared by the Serbs. But he has said the Serbs are largely to blame for the bloodshed in the republic since it declared independence Feb. 29.

Independence is opposed by Bosnia’s Serb minority, and Serb irregulars surrounding Sarajevo have been blocking vital food and medicine shipments.

Serb forces, supported by the Yugoslav army, have occupied large tracts of eastern and northern Bosnia and have linked up with the Serb-held region of Bosnian Krajina in the western corner of the state. They now hold about two-thirds of Bosnia’s territory.

In the republic as a whole, more than 1,300 people have died, and 700,000 have fled their homes to escape the fighting.