2 U.S. Journalists Killed, 1 Hurt After Hitting Mine in Bosnia

Two U.S. journalists were killed by a mine in Bosnia, the latest casualties in a confused civil war.

In the Adriatic, NATO warships almost clashed with Yugoslav vessels as the allied ships prevented an oil tanker from breaking a U.N. trade embargo on Serbia and Montenegro, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said.

The journalists, whose vehicle hit a mine near Mostar in southern Bosnia-Herzegovina, were named by a U.N. military spokesman in Medjugorje, south of Mostar, as Brian Brenton from the Magnolia News, a weekly newspaper in Seattle, and Francis W. Tomasic from the U.S. pop culture magazine Spin.

A third U.S. journalist, identified as William T. Vollmann, also from Spin magazine, was slightly injured, the spokesman said, and was at a Spanish U.N. military medical facility at Dracevo, near Mostar.

He said the journalists had driven off the main road toward a river dam in territory controlled by the Muslim-led Bosnian army.

Meanwhile, Eric Chaperon, a U.N. military spokesman in Sarajevo, said that a U.N. Nordic battalion’s eight German-made Leopard tanks, the most formidable weapons in the U.N. peacekeepers’ arsenal, were brought in after a Danish U.N. post came under fire late Friday.

U.N. officials said the tanks fired 72 shells at Bosnian Serb positions. They said no U.N. troops were hurt but they could give no information on any Serbian casualties.

The Bosnian Serb army said nine Serbs were killed and four wounded in the fighting near Muslim-held Tuzla in northern Bosnia Friday night and Saturday.

In the Adriatic, NATO said the Maltese-registered Lido II, carrying 45,000 tons of fuel oil, was intercepted while on a course for the rump Yugoslavia after its Russian master reported flooding in the engine room.

A NATO statement said three Yugoslav navy ships were spotted heading fast toward the Lido II as a boarding team from a Dutch NATO warship was being winched aboard.

While Italian Tornado aircraft scrambled from an air base in southern Italy, the Yugoslav ships headed back into their territorial waters, the statement said.

The boarding party said the Lido II’s crew appeared to have flooded the vessel intentionally, apparently as part of a plan to slip into Yugoslav waters and break the trade embargo imposed for Belgrade’s role in the Bosnian war.