Bosnian Serbs Seize Town, Kill 12 Lined Up for Water in Sarajevo

Bosnian Serb forces were reported to have overrun a key Muslim town Monday and killed at least 12 people in a mortar attack on a crowd lining up for water in Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, the main contingent of the first U.S. combat troops assigned as peacekeepers in the region arrived in the Macedonian capital of Skopje, bringing to more than 300 the number of American soldiers in the former Yugoslav republic.

The Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency said the strategic town of Trnovo, about 18 miles south of Sarajevo, was retaken by Serbian forces, the third time it has changed hands since the civil war began 15 months ago.

Tanjug quoted a Serbian army statement as saying that Bosnian government troops had retreated in panic toward their main base on Mt. Igman overlooking Sarajevo, leaving behind “scores of dead soldiers” and large quantities of weapons and ammunition.

“Their dream of forcibly connecting Sarajevo and Gorazde through Serb territories was shattered,” it said.

Gorazde is one of six besieged Muslim cities declared safe areas by the U.N. Security Council.

In the Dobrinja district of Sarajevo, 12 people were killed and 15 wounded when a mortar shell slammed into a crowd waiting for water, according to hospital reports.

Rebel Serb gunners perched in hillside strongholds have kept up a reign of terror on the city, with almost daily shelling since laying siege to the Bosnian capital in April, 1992.

With the city’s water mains cut for almost a month, people are forced out into the open to line up for communal water pumps or deliveries by trucks.

The attack on the crowd followed an agreement by leaders of Sarajevo’s Serbs and the Muslims to restore the city’s power and water supplies.

In Macedonia, the main body of the first U.S. combat troops assigned as peacekeepers to the former Yugoslav federation arrived to help prevent the Bosnian war from spreading across international borders.

The 156-strong U.S. unit from Berlin, wearing U.N. blue berets and carrying M-16 rifles, landed at Skopje airport to join an advance party that has built up to 150.

The U.S. soldiers, who are members of an elite Ranger unit, are the first from their country to join the multinational U.N. peacekeeping operation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department issued a warning Monday that Iran’s Islamic militants may be offering military training to Bosnian Muslims and may be preparing to use violence against Westerners in the former Yugoslavia.

“We’ve got no specifics as to timing or targets, but we recently received indications of threatening activity (by Iranian Islamic militants) and we thought it would be prudent to release a warning in light of those reports,” department spokesman Mike McCurry said at a briefing.