Three Die as Sarajevo Endures Another Shelling

Mortar rounds shattered windows and blew holes in a parking lot at the U.N. headquarters Saturday in heavy shelling that forced peacekeepers to stop aid flights briefly.

At least three people were reported killed in the morning shelling. After an afternoon lull, mortar and machine-gun fire echoed in the capital in the evening, but there were no new reports of casualties. Heavy machine-gun fire crackled at high-rise apartment buildings near the U.N. headquarters.

Britain’s Press Assn., quoting the British Defense Ministry, said two British soldiers were slightly wounded by shrapnel while digging a shelter for U.N. observers.

The continued shelling came on the heels of a report by a British newspaper that U.N. officials believe the shellings of a bread line and an orphan’s funeral and other attacks in Sarajevo were staged by the mainly Muslim defenders as propaganda ploys.

The Independent story Saturday also said there were indications ABC News producer David Kaplan, who was killed as he accompanied Yugoslav Premier Milan Panic on a visit to the Bosnian capital, was not shot by a Serbian sniper.

The Independent did not say who might have shot Kaplan, but the story from New York said U.N. officials believe the bullet that killed him near Sarajevo’s airport Aug. 13 was unlikely to have been fired from distant Serbian positions because of its trajectory.

The Independent said confidential reports circulating at U.N. headquarters say such incidents were meant to smear Serbian besiegers, win world sympathy and trigger outside military intervention.

Spokesman Kemar Muftic said Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic denied the report.

“It is ridiculous to say we are shelling ourselves,” Muftic said.

But he said there will be an investigation into the sniper killing of a Ukrainian U.N. peacekeeper Thursday.