Sarajevo Shelling Forces Mourners to Run for Cover

Mourners burying 12 war victims scattered in terror Sunday when two mortar shells exploded 100 yards from graves dug in one of Sarajevo’s main cemeteries.

Scores of screaming people ran for cover at the Lions cemetery, and some jumped into open graves as shrapnel ricocheted around their heads, eyewitnesses said.

A mortar attack at the cemetery in August during the funeral of two children killed by a sniper caused outrage around the world when the grandmother of one of them was seriously wounded.

There were no casualties in Sunday’s attack, but the blasts and the howl of air-raid sirens increased tension in the city besieged by rebel Serbs fighting Bosnia’s independence from Yugoslavia.

The Bosnian government said Sunday that 86 people were killed and 286 wounded across Bosnia-Herzegovina over the previous 24 hours. The casualties included 16 killed and 66 wounded in Sarajevo.

Earlier Sunday, Sarajevo Radio reported that Serbs shelled Muslim and Croatian suburbs near Sarajevo’s airport.

The shelling came shortly before a plane carried U.N. military officers to Sarajevo and then left with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in what one U.N. official called a successful test for resuming relief flights to the capital.

An international aid airlift was suspended Sept. 3 after an Italian cargo plane was shot down and its four crewmen were killed. Relief flights were expected to resume by midweek after the three warring parties signed pledges in Geneva to protect airlifts and overland relief convoys.

“We broke the siege of flights,” U.N. spokesman Adnan Abdelrazek said. “Maybe this will serve as a precedent for humanitarian flights.”