Serbs Fire Missiles Into Suburbs of Croatian Capital : Balkans: Attack is retaliation for recapture of Croat villages seized 2 years ago. There is fear of all-out war.

Rebel Serbs fired Scud-type missiles into several suburbs of the Croatian capital of Zagreb on Sunday in a defiant warning to the government that they are ready to go to war again to keep territory seized two years ago.

The missile attacks on Samobor, Lucko and Jastrebarsko on the outskirts of Zagreb were launched in retaliation for a Croatian army offensive against Serbian-held villages in the southwest of the republic.

The blasts that injured at least three people near the capital Sunday heightened fears of a rekindling of the 1991 Serbian-Croatian war that left 10,000 dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and sparked the even bloodier conflict in the neighboring republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Serbian forces in the occupied region of Croatia they call the Republic of Serbian Krajina also shelled the front-line city of Karlovac for the third day running. Croatian Radio reported that eight people have been killed in those bombardments.

Fighting continued in several areas of Croatia, even after President Franjo Tudjman ordered his forces to halt their offensive so that negotiations could be resumed to resolve the on-again-off-again conflict.

Croatian forces in Bosnia have also stepped up their attacks on the Muslim minority in the city of Mostar. Bosnian state radio reported 10 killed in shelling from Croatian positions on Sunday.

After the retaliatory Serbian attacks on the outskirts of Zagreb, Peter Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, toured the scene of rocket attacks in Lucko and Karlovac. He issued a statement characterizing the blasts as “a terror attack, plain and simple.”

Croatian defense officials said 18 civilians have died and 84 have been injured in recent weeks in fighting in the Krajina region, which is under U.N. patrol.

A senior official in the Krajina leadership that lays claim to nearly one-third of Croatia, self-styled Prime Minister Djordje Bjegovic, warned in a dispatch carried by the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency that “the only solution is war on the entire front” unless Zagreb forces cease their offensive aimed at retaking territory lost during the war two years ago.

Army officers in the rogue state’s declared capital of Knin distributed a list to Western news agencies detailing 50 other potential targets they plan to attack if the government continues its offensive.

It included Zagreb airport, where the U.S. Army operates a field hospital that treats wounded U.N. troops and civilian employees of the massive peacekeeping operation in the Balkans.

Despite the threat of renewed full-scale conflict, many Croats expressed support for the government’s offensive.

“Many people in Croatia have lost their homes. Many should return. Our people have to go back to their homes,” said Ankica Puskarica, 55, who had a surface-to-surface missile land a few hundred feet from her back door in the suburb of Lucko on Saturday. “Now is the right time. Our government has been waiting for two years to try to make peace in Geneva with the Serbs.”

Marijan Jug, a 24-year-old auto parts salesman from Lucko, seemed to take the attack in stride, saying the hostilities were merely a continuation of fighting that began after Croatia declared its independence from the former Yugoslav federation.

“It probably will happen again,” Jug said of missile attacks. “I don’t think the war ever really ended.”

He said Croatia had waited long enough to try to seek a diplomatic solution and has the right to make a bid to recover its lost territory.

“They should do it right now because if they wait for the war in Bosnia to end, the Serbs will have more power,” he said.

Special correspondent Danica Kirka in Zagreb contributed to this story.