Convoy Reaches S. Bosnia City--but Without Food

A U.N. aid convoy reached trapped Muslims here for the first time in 11 weeks Saturday, but it carried no food for thousands of half-starved people in the devastated city.

Sniper fire from Bosnian Croats laying siege to the area was heard as U.N. officials and troops delivered medicine to a makeshift clinic and tossed their own rations to hungry children and old people who scuffled over the food.

“Did you bring food or medicine?” asked one woman as the convoy of eight armored personnel carriers drove down a narrow street, its elegant buildings pockmarked by shells and bullets.

“We have nothing, we have nothing,” she said, turning away in despair when told that the convoy had brought no food.

The Muslim quarter of Mostar, in southern Bosnia, has received no aid deliveries since June 2, when Bosnian Croat forces blocked access to U.N. relief workers.

About 35,000 people in the quarter are desperately short of food, fuel, water and medicine after being cut off by a year of fighting between Muslim-led Bosnian government forces and rebel Croats.

“Virtually every building is destroyed,” said U.N. Protection Force civil affairs director Cedric Thornberry, who led the convoy. “We’re going to have to get humanitarian aid in here and break the siege that way.”

Thornberry described the delivery as a “symbolic” gesture, intended to open the way for regular aid convoys.

One local official told the U.N. mission that without such relief “there are going to be dead in the streets,” said Ron Redmond, a spokesman in Geneva for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Croats and Muslims were allies in the Bosnian war when it began about 17 months ago, but they have been locked in bitter fighting over territory for several months. Croats and Serbs are now apparently cooperating in an effort to divide Bosnia along ethnic lines.

Peacekeepers visiting the hospital in Mostar found that 80% of the patients were civilian.

The underequipped hospital has reportedly been doing 15 to 20 operations a day. There were also about 500 cases of very severe diarrhea.

Also Saturday, 21 elderly Bosnian Jews were evacuated from Sarajevo by bus, and five patients, accompanied by eight relatives, were flown to the Netherlands. Organizers said about 1,000 Jews left the city in nine previous evacuations. They said about 700 Jews remain in Sarajevo.