Artillery Pounds Sarejevo as Fighting Worsens in Bosnia

Serbs pounded Sarajevo with artillery Saturday in the worst shelling of the capital in weeks as fighting worsened across Bosnia.

The artillery barrage started early Saturday morning and went on until late afternoon. Sniper and machine-gun fire was also reported in the besieged city.

The U.N.-controlled Sarajevo airport was closed for four hours because of the attack, U.N. officials said.

Meanwhile, the Bosnian government army said it retook the town of Cazin in the breakaway Muslim enclave of Bihac after rebel Muslims captured it without a fight Friday. The rebels conceded their loss but said they would keep fighting.

Sarajevo radio reported intense artillery and infantry attacks by Serbs and Croats against the besieged north-central Bosnian town of Maglaj. Croatian radio said it was the Muslims who were attacking.

Sarajevo radio reported heavy shelling of Zvornik in eastern Bosnia, of Gradacac in the north and of Gornji Vakuf in western Bosnia, which the United Nations confirmed. Occasional shelling of Goradze in the southeast was also reported.

Sarajevo radio said the city and suburbs of Mostar were shelled overnight and U.N. troops trying to fix a bridge to open up a major supply route near the city were prevented from doing so by Bosnian Croat forces.

According to a crisis center in Sarajevo, 20 people were killed in Bosnia in the previous 24 hours. Officials at Sarajevo’s two main hospitals said eight people were killed in the city and 55 wounded.

Muslim forces apparently provoked the Serb attack against Sarajevo just before dawn Saturday, Col. Bill Aikman, a spokesman for the U.N. Protection Force, said.

He said Muslim-led Bosnian units had fired about 10 mortar rounds at the Serbs, who responded with heavy artillery into the old town district of the capital.

Aikman told reporters the Serbs were using 152-millimeter artillery. “That’s pretty heavy stuff,” he said.

A spokesman for the Bosnian army’s 1st Corps, which is responsible for the defense of Sarajevo, said the Serbs had launched the attack early in the morning by rolling barrel charges downhill onto Bosnian positions.

Residents said the explosions destroyed three houses.

The army spokesman said the object of the Serbian shelling was not clear. “We are trying to figure out the purpose of the attack,” he said.