Serbs Block Aid Convoy on Way to Muslim Town

Serbs blocked a U.N. aid convoy with a log barricade Saturday from reaching a besieged Muslim town where scores are reportedly dying from cold and hunger, relief officials said.

Fighting between Bosnian government forces and Bosnian Serb rebels, meanwhile, spilled over into Serbia, one of two republics left in what remains of Yugoslavia.

Bosnia’s Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, also told reporters that his community got a raw deal in accepting an agreement to divide Bosnia into provinces but that at least it had prevented Muslim “domination” by accepting the plan.

Relief workers and ham radio operators said Serbian forces refused to allow the U.N. relief convoy into Zepa, a town 40 miles east of Sarajevo that has been cut off from aid during the war.

The convoy came within 500 yards of the town before turning back to spend the night in Borike, 12 miles away, a ham radio operator in Zepa said in a message received in Zagreb, Croatia.

He said the convoy would try again today.

The Yugoslav government planned to meet late Saturday night to discuss the shells fired by Bosnian troops into the Serbian town of Bajina Basta. No casualties were reported.

The incident occurred during a Bosnian government offensive apparently aimed at breaching a strategic corridor connecting Serbia to Pale, the Bosnian Serb stronghold southeast of Sarajevo.

Bosnian Serb commanders said at least 40 of their troops died in the offensive centered south of Bratunac, 75 miles northeast of Sarajevo.

“This is the toughest Muslim offensive on Serb positions” in the region since the war began, Col. Milan Prstojevic, a Bosnian Serb commander, told a reporter in Bratunac. Bosnia’s government is Muslim-led.

Evidence of large-scale civilian deaths was clearly visible in Bratunac. Some 100 freshly dug graves were in the cemetery.