Gunmen Ambush British Aid Workers in Bosnia; 1 Killed

Gunmen ambushed and robbed three British aid workers on a relief mission in central Bosnia-Herzegovina. One of the men was killed and the other two were wounded as they fled, officials said Friday.

The bloodshed highlighted growing lawlessness and desperation in central Bosnia, where food is dangerously short. Aid officials warned that such attacks could endanger their mission to feed hungry Bosnians.

Elsewhere in Bosnia, three Italian journalists were killed by a mortar shell Friday in Mostar, where Muslims are under siege by Croatian forces, said Capt. Guy Vinet of the U.N. Bosnia Command. The journalists were believed to be working for RAI, the main Italian broadcaster.

Britain on Friday suspended its humanitarian convoys to the former Yugoslav federation as a result of the attack on the aid workers. Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said the murder was a “tragedy and a crime” and called on the Bosnian authorities to find the killers.

Mediator Lord Owen called the killing of aid worker 35-year-old Paul Goodall, the father of four daughters, a “coldblooded shooting.”

“If this kind of thing continues, we won’t be able to operate,” said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

He also cited field reports of continuing violence against non-Serbs in the northwestern Serb-held Banja Luka area, saying three Muslims, ages 65 to 70, were found with their throats slit in their homes in Prijedor.

Goodall and the two other drivers were returning late Thursday to their hotel in Zenica, a government-held town about 40 miles northwest of Sarajevo, when three unidentified men in uniforms and armed with assault weapons stopped their vehicle, Redmond said.

The gunmen forced them to drive to an overpass outside Zenica where they took the vehicle and opened fire. Goodall was killed by two shots to the head. Simon King, 27, and David Court, 42, were wounded as they ran.

They were taken to a British military hospital in Vitez, where Court, the more seriously wounded, was in serious but stable condition.

Goodall’s body was found 50 yards from the road in a minefield that U.N. soldiers had to first clear.

The drivers worked for Britain’s Overseas Development Administration but at the time were working for UNHCR.

In recent weeks, several food convoys have been attacked in the Zenica area. Six Bosnian police escorts were wounded in nearby Kakanj earlier in the week.

Food is critically short in Kakanj, south of Zenica. Fighting and bureaucratic delays by Bosnia’s warring factions mean only a fraction of the food needed actually arrives.

The British driver was the 11th person working for UNHCR killed in Bosnia, Redmond said.