Plan for U.N. Force at Sarajevo Airport Stalled

A plan to place U.N. observers in Sarajevo airport has been abandoned for the time being because of a ground battle in the area, a U.N. spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Severe shelling and street battles wrecked a truce in Sarajevo on Wednesday, setting back the planned U.N. airlift of food to tens of thousands of people facing starvation in the Bosnian capital.

The U.N. spokeswoman said attempts to supply Sarajevo--directed by Brig. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, the senior U.N. officer in the city--have not succeeded so far.

About 60 military observers drawn from other U.N. peacekeeping operations who were on their way to Sarajevo are now stuck outside the city because of the fighting, she said.

In Sarajevo, despondent civilians ran to their cellars after Serb and Muslim-Croat militia forces reverted to all-out bloodletting, all but dooming a cease-fire that lasted 48 hours, the longest in almost three months of conflict.

Fierce street fighting erupted in districts near Sarajevo’s airport, whose control Serb occupiers previously had agreed to relinquish for U.N. relief flights, while Serb artillery in surrounding hills resumed pounding central Sarajevo, journalists said.

Serb mortar shells slammed into residential compounds in the Butmir and Dobrinja districts, killing at least two civilians, wounding 10 and setting many apartments ablaze, Sarajevo Radio said.

Mortar blasts and machine-gun fire also rattled U.N. peacekeeping headquarters in Sarajevo.