Serb Assault on Enclave Said to Advance : Bosnia: The target is the Muslim pocket of Gorazde. The Red Cross decides to evacuate potential victims of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the north.

Bosnian Serb forces appeared to be making progress Saturday in a concerted five-day assault to seize the U.N.-protected Muslim enclave of Gorazde, U.N. sources said.

In northern Bosnia, Red Cross officials decided to evacuate Muslim and Croatian civilians from the town of Prijedor to save them from an alleged Serbian campaign of terror.

The “last-resort” decision followed reports that Serbian militants in the town had targeted Muslims and Croats in a campaign of killings, beatings and arson.

Sarajevo radio, reporting on the Gorazde fighting, said, “All suburbs are coming under fierce artillery fire and dozens of houses have been razed to the ground.”

“The Serbs are certainly trying to finish off Gorazde with what seems to be a big-scale offensive,” one U.N. source said.

“There are people in our staff who made an assessment that Gorazde could well fall because it’s a very shallow area. There is one main road and if it is taken it is the end of the pocket.”

A spokesman for the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), Maj. Rob Annink, said fighting in Gorazde on Friday had killed four people and wounded 25.

Annink said a column of Serbian tanks, armored cars and trucks was seen moving eastward from Bosnian Serb headquarters at Pale late on Friday, apparently headed for the Gorazde front.

Asked how the United Nations could tolerate the Serbs seizing an area that it had declared a protected zone, he said: “The members of the Security Council should object to these happenings in Gorazde. UNPROFOR cannot do anything at this stage.”

The U.N. sources said the U.N. force was powerless to deter a Serbian advance until after the planned deployment of 800 Ukrainian peacekeeping troops in Gorazde later this month.

As an illustration of continuing tensions even in areas where cease-fires have been negotiated, Annink said the Muslim-led government army had suspended all steps to normalize the situation in the divided southern city of Mostar after a Croatian sniper seriously wounded a Muslim official.

He said international monitors in the city, whose Muslim quarter was pounded by besieging Croats for months, met commanders of both sides to impress on them the gravity of such an attack.

Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic endorsed the International Committee of the Red Cross’ plan to evacuate non-Serbs from Prijedor, saying lives came first even if this helped “ethnic cleansing.”

“As far as I am concerned, if these people are in danger we have to take them out. We should not try to protect ourselves. We must know that lives come first,” he said.

U.N. and Red Cross officials said they accepted claims by the Muslim organization Merhamet that Bosnian Serbs had killed 17 Muslims and two Croats in or near Prijedor in the past few days.