Serbs Press Assault on Muslim Town as U.N. Looks On

Serb tanks, artillery and infantry attacked the Muslim-held central Bosnian town of Maglaj for the second day running Saturday in an assault observed by British troops serving in the U.N. Protection Force.

The attack was one of several reported across Bosnia-Herzegovina that undermined the latest U.N.-brokered truce in the former Yugoslav republic.

Maglaj, with a peacetime population of about 40,000, was seen by U.N. peacekeepers as the Serbs’ next major target.

“The military assessment is definite that it is an attack to seize Maglaj,” U.N. spokesman Cmdr. Barry Frewer told a news briefing.

The attacks violated a cease-fire agreement that took effect Thursday, signed for the first time by military leaders of Bosnia’s three warring parties.

The United Nations issued a stiff statement condemning the Serb attack, and Frewer said Gen. Philippe Morillon, the U.N. Protection Force commander in Bosnia, had carried it personally to the Serbs.

Maglaj, about 70 miles north of Sarajevo, holds an unknown number of refugees who fled from Doboj farther north when it fell to the Serbs earlier in the 7-month-old war, which has claimed more than 14,000 lives.

Sarajevo radio reported artillery and infantry attacks on defense lines around the north Bosnian Muslim town of Gradacac, where it said fresh Serb troops were brought in by helicopters--a move that would violate a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Gradacac is seen as the last major obstacle in a land corridor the Serbs would like to stretch across the full width of northern Bosnia.

Sarajevo radio, which is Muslim-run, also reported artillery attacks on the Muslim towns of Brcko, Tesanj and in the southeast on Croat-held Mostar and in the area of Gorazde and Trnovo.

In a move fulfilling an agreement signed last month, Bosnian Serb authorities released 755 Muslim and Croat prisoners from a notorious detention camp in Banja Luka.

The prisoners, all males over 40 and under 18, were driven in a convoy of 14 buses from Manjaca camp to the Croatian town of Nova Gradiska, where they were handed over to U.N. forces.

In Belgrade, Tanjug news agency said the Bosnian Serb army, which has encircled Gorazde, urged the Muslims there to surrender.

The Sarajevo crisis center said 21 people were killed and 95 wounded in the past 24 hours in Bosnia.

None of these reports could be independently confirmed.