Serb Attack Breaches Sarajevo Truce

Rebel Serbs launched three rocket-propelled grenades Wednesday at government troop positions in Sarajevo, violating the U.N. cease-fire and raising fears that the city’s recent calm will prove to be short-lived.

Outside the capital, Serbs pounded two Muslim enclaves and continued to block relief convoys--despite their encouraging promise a day earlier to open an airport in the region to relief flights.

U.N. officials said Serbs fired the three grenades at Bosnian positions around the Jewish cemetery in downtown Sarajevo. A U.N. spokesman, Lt. Col. Bill Aikman, said Serbian artillery also fired Tuesday on the Muslim town of Breza, just north of Sarajevo.

While in both cases the Serbs clearly had breached the 3-week-old cease-fire, the attacks apparently were not serious enough to trigger a North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strike under the alliance’s Feb. 9 ultimatum.

Grenade launchers were not listed among the heavy weapons that had to be removed from a 12-mile radius around Sarajevo, and Tuesday’s attack came from outside the zone.

U.N. officials quoted Serbs as saying they fired the grenades because Muslim-led government forces were violating the cease-fire themselves by reinforcing their trenches.