Anger, Tears as Sarajevo Evacuation Fails : Bosnia: The second attempt at getting hundreds of women, children and elderly out of the capital is postponed.

Hundreds of women, children and elderly men were left bewildered and in tears Friday when a second attempt in a month to evacuate them from this besieged capital was postponed at the last minute.

Thousands of people who gathered in freezing weather to see off their relatives were stunned when they learned that the packed buses would not be leaving after all.

When one of the eight buses, loaded with refugees who had paid $60 for the eight-hour drive through Serbian and Croatian lines to safety, moved 15 yards to another parking space, many in the crowd cheered, believing that the evacuation had begun.

But then the evacuees began to climb reluctantly off the buses--some cursing, others weeping.

One woman put her hand over her face and tearfully asked: “Why are we being treated like this? What have we done to deserve it?”

An evacuation organizer said: “We have been working on this for a year. This is a bitter, bitter blow.”

Peter Kessler, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said: “The evacuation is postponed, at least for today. It appears that the evacuation got hung up on the issue of an HVO (Croatian forces) commander detained in Sarajevo when his unit was disbanded some weeks ago.”

Earlier this month, the Muslim-led Bosnian army disbanded the HVO unit in Sarajevo and detained five of its commanders in a crackdown on crime and smuggling in the armed forces.

The buses carrying the old, the very young, the sick and the wounded were to have passed through Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat-held territory on their way to the Adriatic coast.

More than 500 Serbs were evacuated earlier this month to Serbia, but the evacuation of Muslims and Croats to Croatia was delayed because of fighting in central Bosnia.