U.N. Finds Many Injured Muslims in Bosnia Enclave

U.N. refugee workers found thousands of wounded Muslims trapped in battle-torn pockets of eastern Bosnia on Saturday, and a doctor said dozens were dying daily of sickness and hunger.

Also Saturday, the commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, Gen. Philippe Morillon, returned to Sarajevo after a daring mission to the besieged enclave of Cerska. But he appeared to have failed in his goal of negotiating the immediate evacuation of wounded Muslims.

Officials with the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said 2,200 wounded and sick Muslims had been found in or near Cerska and more than 11,000 people, mostly from Srebrenica, southeast of Tuzla, had requested evacuation.

Izumi Nakamitsu, a U.N. refugee spokeswoman in Tuzla, said Simon Martell, a World Health Organization doctor who entered Srebrenica, reported that 20 to 30 of the wounded were dying daily.

As many as 35,000 could pour out of the region if U.N. officials managed to negotiate safe passage to Tuzla, said Anders Levinsen of the U.N. refugee agency. Bosnian Serb commanders, however, have blocked evacuation for the past week.

The wounded and others seeking evacuation were located after Morillon set out for the Cerska region Friday, on a mission to secure Serb agreement on safe passage.

Morillon, upon returning from touring Cerska, said: “I hope it will be days, not weeks,” before a medical evacuation begins.

But he said Serb commanders had linked any evacuation to permission for Serb officials to go to Tuzla and other Muslim areas to see how Serbs there are faring and assure them that they are allowed to leave as well.

All the Serbs remaining in Tuzla, however, are believed to be supporters of the Muslim-led Bosnian government.

Morillon said he “did not see any signs of massacres” in the parts of Cerska he was able to visit and that the situation there was less dramatic than had been feared.

But U.N. refugee officials said Morillon did not visit many outlying areas where ham radio operators reported that entire villages had been set ablaze.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, mediators met with representatives of the warring sides to attempt to forge an agreement on a controversial peace plan. The meeting recessed without agreement and the representatives returned home to discuss the proposals with their cohorts.

The plan calls for dividing Bosnia into 10 semiautonomous, largely ethnic-based provinces. Only Bosnian Croats have agreed to that aspect of the plan.

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina began after ethnic Croats and Muslims voted to secede from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. More than 130,000 people have been killed or are missing.

Morillon said he planned to negotiate with Sefer Halilovic, the head of Bosnian government forces, and Serbian military leader Gen. Ratko Mladic for a cease-fire that would allow an evacuation in eastern Bosnia to begin.

Morillon said 18 pallets of aid dropped by the U.S. military had landed near Cerska at Konjevic Polje on Friday and Saturday, bolstering meager food supplies there. Some parachuted aid also reportedly reached Srebrenica.

Morillon said he saw many shelled and gutted homes during his one-hour visit to the Cerska area, but no dead bodies.

“I am an old soldier,” he said. “I have experience with the smell of death, and I didn’t smell it here.”

Morillon did say conditions were dire, however, in Srebrenica, where 5,000 refugees from Cerska have fled.

He said he had been told that in Srebrenica, cut off from relief convoys since December, children and elderly people were dying of hunger. He said the city, now holding about 60,000 people, would become the main target of U.N. concern.

Earlier, when it seemed an evacuation was imminent, preparations for an influx of refugees reached a fever pitch in Tuzla, where 60,000 refugees already have arrived since the war began nearly a year ago.

The hallway of a sports center was transformed into an emergency hospital, with dozens of cots set up behind screens for those needing emergency treatment.

As high school girls played handball in the main gymnasium, workers spread mattresses and blankets on the floor of a smaller gym for the less-desperate medical cases.

Revising earlier figures, Levinsen gave the following breakdown of potential evacuees, based on reports sent from Srebrenica and Konjevic Polje, 30 miles southeast of Tuzla:

* 2,100 wounded or sick from Srebrenica. These include 100 “first priority” wounded, most with leg wounds who would have to be evacuated lying down.

* 120 wounded from Konjevic Polje, including 70 “first priority” cases.

* 9,000 relatively healthy people from Srebrenica.

Levinsen said the list was incomplete and that more people would probably seek to leave the area.