Italy Says Bosnia Plane Likely Was Shot Down : Balkans: Defense minister cites evidence pointing to ‘a criminal act’ in crash of mercy flight near Sarajevo.

An Italian mercy flight that crashed in the mountains of Bosnia-Herzegovina was probably shot down, Italian Cabinet ministers said Friday as rescuers recovered the remains of four crewmen who died trying to deliver 4,500 blankets to the besieged people of Sarajevo.

The twin-engine military transport was in level flight at 10,000 feet in clear weather when it plunged to the ground 21 miles southwest of Sarajevo on Thursday afternoon, Italian officials said. U.N. officials awaiting the flight in Sarajevo said there was no distress call from the Pisa-based G-222 transport.

It was the first Western relief plane to crash since the start of the Sarajevo airlift in June, an effort in which more than 1,000 flights have carried supplies into the capital.

Italian Defense Minister Salvo Ando said eyewitness accounts and evidence from the crash site indicated that the plane crashed as a result of “a criminal act.”

“The plane was probably shot down. We have no confirmation . . . but we have authoritative evidence,” Ando said. “Until now, humanitarian flights have not been protected by military aircraft. In the future, security will have to be fully guaranteed.”

Foreign Trade Minister Claudio Vitalone told reporters after a Cabinet meeting, “There are elements which lead us to believe that there may have been a missile attack.”

U.N. officials in Bosnia-Herzegovina told reporters that witnesses on the ground said they saw two missiles fired at the Italian 46th Air Brigade aircraft, which Ando said was clearly marked with U.N. insignia.

Residents close to the crash site, which is near the town of Jesenic, 20 miles west of Sarajevo, told the British news agency Reuters on Friday that they saw one of the two rockets slamming into the plane from the direction of Konjic, a town in Muslim-Croatian territory, although the area south of it is held by Serbian militiamen.

“I was watching the plane flying past toward Sarajevo when two seconds later two rockets homed in on it from behind without a sound,” Zahrovic Fohrudin said.

Added Dudic Esad, a local Muslim fighter: “One hit the plane in the rear. A wing fell off, and the plane burst into flames. The other rocket missed. The plane spun straight down to the ground.”

Loggers Mato Javran and Anto Behrcic, interviewed by an Associated Press reporter, told a similar story. They said they saw what looked like a rocket hit the plane; a wing broke off, and the plane began to spin before suddenly dropping out of the sky.

The United Nations halted all relief flights to Sarajevo after the crash. Asked when they might resume, Mike Aitchinson, a U.N. official in Zagreb, Croatia, said, “Maybe never.”

The plane, which had departed from Split, Croatia, fell in the heavily wooded mountainous region where Serbian, Bosnian Croatian and Muslim irregulars are skirmishing for control. Serbian irregulars told reporters that Muslims were responsible for shooting it down. They speculated that Muslim fighters had mistaken the Italian plane for one belonging to the Yugoslav air force.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim, countered that “the missiles came from the area controlled by Serbs.” He told reporters that the United Nations should either provide military air escorts for future flights or send troops to clear land corridors of heavy weapons and anti-aircraft guns.

In Washington, the State Department said it had not yet received official word about the cause of the crash.

“We’ve seen reports that the aircraft was deliberately downed, but we’re still awaiting reports from the U.N. and Italian teams that went out to the crash site,” spokesman Martin Judge said.

The Pentagon said Thursday that two of four U.S. helicopters were fired upon, but not hit, as they helped search for the wreckage of the Italian plane. On Friday, according to the Associated Press, the report was modified: Pilots of two of the helicopters said they had seen flashes of small-arms fire but could not be sure that shots had been fired at them.

But the Financial Times, a London newspaper, reported that a local commander of the Croatian Defense Council admitted that his men had shot at the helicopters.

The helicopter flights, off the Navy vessel Iwo Jima in the Adriatic Sea, were the first by the United States over Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Italian national television reported Friday that U.S. F-14 fighters had scrambled to support them.

In an interview Friday with CNN, Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said the helicopter incident illustrated the danger of becoming more deeply involved in the Bosnian conflict.

That is “an example of the sort of thing I’m concerned about,” he said. “We need to recognize that there is a real distinction between trying to assist in getting humanitarian assistance into Sarajevo and getting engaged in trying to make peace amongst the contending factions.”

He said the limited role of providing and shielding humanitarian assistance is the most appropriate one for the United States now.

Eagleburger said he would “hazard a guess . . . the plane was shot down.”

“There are a lot of out-of-control people in the area,” he said. “It could have been anyone.”

But Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said he did not know if the Italian plane had been shot down or whether it had experienced mechanical problems.

In a speech to the Economics Club of Indianapolis that was broadcast back to the Pentagon, Cheney cited potential dangers to U.S. intervention in the region, saying: “It doesn’t strike me as the type of conflict in which I’m prepared to commit young Americans to combat.”

French U.N. troops recovered the scattered body parts of the Italian plane’s crew Friday at a site strewn with wreckage, and Peter Kessler, a U.N. refugee official in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, said there was evidence of “some kind of disintegration or explosion” in midair.

Izumi Nakamitsu, a U.N. refugee director in Sarajevo, said U.N. recovery teams had found a hole in the fuselage of the Italian-built plane and remnants of what might be a missile, the Associated Press reported from Sarajevo.

From the site of the crash, the Associated Press reported that charred, still-smoldering wreckage was scattered over 100 yards down the side of a slope.

Blankets and bits of fuselage hung in trees. On the ground, spots of blood stained mud and metal.

A badge emblazoned with a wolf and the words “Air Brigade” in Italian lay on a piece of twisted metal, next to a scrap of a shirt and a smashed pocket calculator. Red parachute harnesses, torn bits of clothing, flight maps and an emergency exit door were strewn about.

A French doctor working for the United Nations told reporters, “I’ve found bits of bodies but nothing whole or identifiable.”

On Friday morning, Croatian militiamen in the area brought flowers to the crash site and lit candles.

International good Samaritans are everyday targets in the ethnic fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina that has claimed at least 8,000 lives and displaced up to 2 million people. In addition to mercy flights, U.N. vehicles and aid convoys have frequently come under fire in fighting that has seen Serbian forces win control of about 70% of the country since a February vote for independence by the Croatian and Muslim majority.

Italy is heavily engaged in both enforcing the international embargo against Serbia and in aiding the international relief effort in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Italian navy ships and aircraft patrol the Adriatic to seek blockade runners, and the air force has flown about 130 relief flights to Sarajevo, carrying nearly 2,000 tons of food and relief supplies.