Across Bosnia, Brutality Persists : War: Fighting in central and southern regions has resulted in a new series of detention camps, a new flood of refugees and new stories of atrocities.

A thick silence had descended over this sleeping city one night when Resad, a 47-year-old Muslim carpenter, heard soldiers murmuring outside his apartment building. In moments, the Croatian soldiers entered and began scanning names on the doors. Croatian doors they passed by. At Muslim doors, they rang the bell. Resad heard his doorbell ring.

“I woke my children and my wife up; I told them Judgment Day had come,” said Resad, who spent weeks of brutal detention in a Croatian camp before being interviewed at a refugee transit center in neighboring Croatia. “They rang my bell, asked for my identification, and then they asked us to come with them. Then the black days and the black nights began.”

On the other side of the river in Mostar, where Croats are facing off against a last push by the Muslim-dominated Bosnian army to gain territory in central Bosnia-Herzegovina, residents and soldiers tell stories of Muslim detention camps and Croatian prisoners who are forced by Muslims to give blood every 10 days.

At a hospital on a hill overlooking the embattled city, Dr. Ekrim Divanovic, a Muslim physician treating Croatian patients, had little good to say about either side: “I will quote Winston Churchill in 1936 when he said, ‘Between war and dishonor, you have chosen dishonor.’ Churchill told it to Chamberlain then, and I would say now that probably everyone here has chosen dishonor instead of an honest war.”

As Serbian forces eased their siege on the capital city of Sarajevo and peace talks began--then collapsed--in Geneva, it may have seemed that the 17-month-old Bosnian war was on the wane. Relegated, even briefly, to bitter memory were stories of hellish Serbian detention camps, mass graves and the rape by Serbian militiamen of thousands of Muslim women. The Serbian artillery above Sarajevo has been relatively quiet for weeks.

But the reality is that all the recent peace efforts have not lessened the war’s brutality. And, indeed, a desperate war has been playing out for disputed territories in central and southern Bosnia.

There were reports on Friday that Mostar exploded in tank and mortar fire, with heavy fighting between Muslim-led government forces and Bosnian Croat troops. The Mostar fighting erupted at the end of a two-day cease-fire and set back days of U.N. efforts to build confidence between Muslim and Croat authorities in the divided city on a vital aid route to Sarajevo and central Bosnia.

The latest outbreak is just part of the battle to establish facts on the ground before they can be signed in ink in Geneva. It is an end-game of sorts for Bosnian Muslims who have wearied of playing the world’s victims and do not see the current peace maps as the resolution they had sought.

Croats have fought back, and the result over the last two months has been a new series of detention camps, this time run by Croats and Muslims, a new flood of refugees from “ethnic cleansing” on both sides and new stories of atrocities and human rights violations.

“Credible reports from people fleeing the region in southwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina point to a new campaign of . . . ethnic cleansing that is as brutal as any so far witnessed in the Bosnian conflict,” the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a recent statement.

The refugee agency mainly singled out Croatian forces. It accused them of holding Muslim detainees under “appalling” conditions in prison camps, driving Muslim residents of Mostar and surrounding communities from their homes and the commission of crimes such as rape, looting and murder.

Both the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. agency say they have evidence that Muslim detainees have been forced by Croats to work on the front lines, digging trenches and performing other dangerous work, a violation of international law. At least 17 Muslim detainees were killed working on the front lines in Batkovic, the Red Cross said.

“Maybe we are getting used to atrocities, but this is awful,” said Manoel de Almeida e Silva of the U.N. refugee unit.

In response, Croats say Muslims are committing equally vicious acts, also forcing detainees to work on front lines, forcibly taking blood, raping and murdering civilians. The Croats say that there are 4,650 of their people being detained in Muslim concentration camps and that 187 Croatian villages have been ethnically cleansed, looted, destroyed or damaged.

In many cases, international aid workers say they have been unable to verify reports because they have not had access to areas such as east Mostar, where Croats claim that at least seven Muslim-operated detention camps are located.

But the Red Cross said it has verified that all three sides have illegally placed prisoners on front lines. “In central Bosnia, the fighting between the (Muslim) Bosnian army and the (Croatian) HVO makes it not only insecure, but is increasing the number of areas which require humanitarian assistance. There are people everywhere sort of trapped in different pockets in central Bosnia: Muslim pockets, Croat pockets, pockets within pockets,” Silva said.

The story of Resad, the Muslim carpenter in Mostar, is chilling and typical of those told by hundreds of Muslims who have fled the city and are sheltered now in a refugee camp on the island of Obonjan off the coast of Croatia. The camp is operated by Croatia, which has backed Bosnian Croats who drove the Muslims from their homes to begin with.

Resad said that after Croatian soldiers rounded up his family on May 9 at 2 a.m., he was separated from his wife and children and taken to a hotel, under fire on all sides by Muslim forces. He finally was taken to the cellar of a senior citizens’ home, where he spent two days locked up with 160 others without food or water.

He recalled: “We didn’t know this was even a shelter until one of the local people, a Croat, came in. He told us, ‘I was going to give this milk to my army, but I will give it to you.’ He was almost crying. He told us to get in the shelter and to lock the door so no one could enter. I spent almost three days there, and all we got was that milk.”

After the third day, the men were taken from the cellar and forced to run across town with their hands above their heads to the university. There, they were gathered in a large room. A man walked in, wearing cowboy boots and spurs.

“He had long hair, maybe 25 years old,” Resad recalled. “He told us, ‘Now we’re going to play the tape so you can see how Ustashas (Croatians) slaughter people.’ ” Resad added that they were told that they would be tortured.

But none of the threats came true. Instead the prisoners were herded after dark onto buses and unloaded at a former Yugoslav national army heliport at Rodoc, one of the best documented of the Croatian detention camps. Resad said he passed several rooms with women behind bars. He was stuck in a large basketball hall with 700 other men.

“They started beating us,” he said. “They took us together and they hit us with a kind of thick cable. I had just a few blows on my back, but when you hit a horse with that kind of a cable, you knock him down.

“The next night, eight people in black uniforms came to the gym,” he added. “They were looking for the people in the (Bosnian) army. They were taken to the corridor, and they were beaten.”

In all, Resad said, he was held at Rodoc for two months. Then he was taken with his wife and children to the refugee camp on Obonjan, where he has waited for news on where he will be allowed to go next. He depends on the Croatians for food, water and shelter.

There are 300 other former Rodoc inmates on Obonjan and 2,000 others still imprisoned, the Red Cross reports.

All of the former detainees on Obonjan were supposed to have been transferred to third countries for resettlement by now. But, so far, none has accepted them. Turkey is the only country to come up with a tentative offer.

Murphy, The Times’ Cairo Bureau chief, was recently on assignment in the Balkans.