Attack in Bosnia Kills 2 French Peacekeepers : Balkans: Two others are wounded in the five-minute fusillade of machine-gun fire near Sarajevo airport.

Heavy machine-gun fire blasted a U.N. convoy arriving from Serbia late Tuesday, killing two French peacekeepers and wounding two others, U.N. officials said.

The attack on the convoy from Belgrade occurred near the airport, where a vital airlift of humanitarian aid was suspended after an Italian aid plane was downed Thursday. Clashes have raged for days around the airstrip.

U.N. forces have increasingly come under fire from warring factions, and the latest incident could bolster proposals seeking greater protection for peacekeepers and relief flights.

U.N. spokesman Yusuf Khalef said it was not immediately clear who fired on the convoy, but Serb militias and Bosnian government forces have positions near the airport. Two French peacekeepers were slightly wounded in the attack, he said.

Military officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they thought the attack was deliberate because the gunfire lasted at least five minutes.

Four U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia have been killed and 46 wounded since June. Also, four Italian airmen were killed when, according to officials, their relief plane was shot down.

Bosnia’s Health Ministry said that 19 people died in fighting across the republic during a 24-hour period ending at noon Tuesday, including nine dead and 69 wounded in Sarajevo.

A senior U.N. peacekeeper in Sarajevo had expressed hope that relief flights could resume to the Bosnian capital on Tuesday, but other U.N. and British military officials in Zagreb, Croatia, said they knew of no such plans.

In France, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said he would support the use of warplanes to protect relief flights.

However, Marrack Goulding, U.N. undersecretary general for peacekeeping, told reporters in New York that no combat air patrols are planned “at present.”

French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas said after meeting with Boutros-Ghali that France will take up the question of air protection at the Security Council. A council resolution would be necessary to put warplanes in the air over Bosnia as part of the U.N. operation.

A Serbian official Tuesday made more specific an earlier assurance that Serbian militiamen would beat a Saturday deadline set by international mediators for putting their heavy guns around Sarajevo and elsewhere under U.N. supervision.

Momcilo Krajisnik, head of the Parliament set up by rebellious Bosnian Serbs, told reporters in a telephone interview: “We have made sure that our heavy artillery positions will be ready for U.N. supervision on Thursday, two days before the deadline.”

The Serbs agreed to the plan last month but so far have not implemented it.