Shells Kill 5 Refugees in Bosnia Hotel : Balkans: At least 6 others die in Sarajevo as U.N. tries to get Serbs to pull back heavy weapons.

Mortar shells crashed into a jammed refugee hotel in the Bosnian capital Monday, setting it ablaze and sending frightened people screaming into darkened streets. Sarajevo radio said five people died.

The Hotel Europe, home to 1,500 refugees, was still burning hours after four mortar shells smashed into the five-story building. Sarajevo was lighted by flashes of gunfire and other explosions.

“There was fire everywhere,” said 13-year-old Almier Jipa, who fled the hotel to an underground cafe. “I saw a lady bleeding in the street, but I couldn’t help her because I was running, too.”

Mirhad Kurtovic, a Bosnian government soldier, said he and his crew pulled two dead and 15 injured from the burning hotel, and the radio station later put the death toll at five.

The upsurge in violence came as the United Nations was seeking to get the Serbs--who have been lobbing shells into the city for five months--to pull back their heavy weapons and surrender them to the control of U.N. peacekeepers.

Shelling earlier in the day claimed at least six lives--including four people killed when a mortar barrage landed in a main Sarajevo street.

Serbs have had the city surrounded for months. Muslim-led forces recently have been trying to break their grip on the city.

In central Croatia, Sgt. Michael Ralph, 32, became the first Canadian member of the U.N. peacekeeping force to die in the Yugoslav conflict. An explosion killed Ralph when his truck ran over a mine.

In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that it has visited more than 10,000 prisoners in detention camps in Bosnia. The Red Cross would not discuss conditions in the camps, where images of emaciated prisoners and reports of torture and summary execution have conjured up comparisons to Nazi concentration camps.

And in a letter to the United Nations, Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic pledged to recognize Bosnia’s boundaries. The statement fell short of granting official recognition, but Panic, a U.S. businessman who became prime minister last month, has said that is forthcoming.

Yugoslavia, which now consists only of Serbia and Montenegro, has been accused of arming and encouraging Serbs in Bosnia to help form a “greater Serbia.”

The violence in Sarajevo on Monday drove home the continuing danger in the Bosnian capital, even though the world’s attention has switched in recent weeks to reports of detention camps and fighters evicting people from their homes.

Two mortars hit Sarajevo’s main Marshal Tito Boulevard in the early afternoon, killing four and wounding 44, Dr. Mufid Lazovic said at Kosevo Hospital.

Two other people were killed in the city, one a 6-year-old boy hit in the head by a bullet, Lazovic said.

Charity officials said a convoy of 964 women and children will leave Sarajevo today, the second such evacuation in a week. The first group, of more than 300, went west to Croatia. The second convoy was headed for Belgrade, capital of Serbia and of what’s left of Yugoslavia.

The convoy has been promised safe passage by Serbian militiamen and the Bosnian government.