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.

The commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, Gen. Philippe Morillon, visited the Muslim town of Cerska and said later it has fallen to Serbian forces who seemed poised to attack an adjoining enclave as Cerska’s 5,000 remaining inhabitants scattered in surrounding hills.

The French general entered Cerska after finally gaining permission from Bosnian Serb military chiefs to check reports of hundreds of Muslims being killed or wounded when Serbian forces seized much of the besieged enclave last week. He hoped to arrange for evacuations.

“I hope it will be days, not weeks,” before a medical evacuation begins, Morillon said in Sarajevo after the Cerska visit. But he appeared to have failed in his goal of negotiating the immediate evacuation of wounded Muslims.

Officials 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, about 30 miles south of Cerska, had requested evacuation.

As many as 35,000 could pour out of the region if U.N. officials 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.

Morillon said Serbian commanders had linked any evacuation to permission for Serbian officials to go to Tuzla and other Muslim areas to see how Serbs there are faring and ensure 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.

“Thanks to God it seems that there have been no atrocities there. The war, but not atrocities. We can testify that there are no traces of a massacre, that there are no dead bodies,” Morillon said.

He added that he had been there only an hour and could not be sure of all that had happened. U.N. refugee officials said Morillon did not visit many outlying areas where ham radio operators reported that entire villages had been set ablaze.

The situation in eastern Bosnia, Morillon said, is the same kind of mismatch that has characterized the entire Bosnian war, in which heavily armed Serbs have gained control of about 70% of Bosnia.

Morillon said the Serbs in the Cerska region have heavy artillery and the Bosnian troops have only rifles and grenades.

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.

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

Early today, U.S. Air Force cargo planes completed a seventh day of airdrops over eastern Bosnia, delivering more than 37 tons of food and medical supplies, U.S. officials at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany said.

The latest airdrop included 42,624 military ready-to-eat meals for Srebrenica, officials said.

Morillon said conditions were dire 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 starving.

Donald Acheson, the World Health Organization’s special representative, said 20 to 30 people were dying every day in Srebrenica, and that more than 2,000 wounded and sick required immediate evacuation.

Times special correspondent Laura Silber contributed to this report.