Croats Appear to Be Driving Deeper Into Serb-Occupied Krajina

Croatian troops appeared to be driving deeper into the Serb-occupied Krajina enclave Wednesday as a nearby port called off a war alert for the first time since they burst into the region 13 days ago.

The latest Croatian battle account suggested that Krajina’s front was shifting well east of the Adriatic port of Zadar, formerly a sitting duck for Serbian artillery batteries camped behind a U.N. truce line a few miles inland.

A Zagreb Defense Ministry report said Serbian rebels were now shelling Croatian positions along a winding front spanning the towns of Novigrad, Pridraga, Jasenice and Gorica, all at least 12 miles east or southeast of Zadar.

Thirty-five Croatian soldiers had been killed, 181 wounded and two were missing since the start of the fighting Jan. 22, the ministry statement said.

Scattered artillery and machine-gun fire was also reported along the front from the Maslenica bridgehead 12 miles east of Zadar to Drnis, commanding the mountain pass approach to Krajina at the old truce boundary 60 miles south.

Croatian troops swarmed over a year-old U.N.-patrolled neutral strip into Krajina, a highland crescent skirting Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, in anger at fruitless U.N. efforts to disarm its Serbs and reinstate Zagreb’s sovereignty there.

President Franjo Tudjman’s nationalist government has said the offensive’s goals have been achieved--a key transport junction, a strategic airport adjacent to the port of Zadar and the Peruca Dam in Krajina’s far south.

Sporadic fighting was reported throughout neighboring Bosnia on Wednesday.