Bosnian Government Pushes to Control Supply Routes

Government forces battled rebel Serbs on Monday for control of supply routes north of Sarajevo that are vital to the Serbs’ siege of the exhausted capital.

After a three-day blitz last week, government forces appeared to be settling in for a patient, summer-long push to take the strategic heights from which they could sever the rebel-held supply lines.

Both sides said Monday that they had captured or scattered enemy troops. But it was increasingly difficult to verify such claims, with both sides limiting reporters’ and U.N. observers’ access to strategic locations.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, meanwhile, said his country will not allow any more North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes against Bosnian Serbs, who took more than 370 U.N. peacekeepers hostage after their ammunition dumps were bombed by NATO planes last month.

The Serbs released the last 26 hostages Sunday and claimed they had received promises of no more air strikes. U.N. officials insisted that strikes remain an option.

Government forces made substantial gains around Sarajevo last week, according to U.N. officials, and at least temporarily cut two rebel supply roads.

The Bosnian army appeared to be shifting troops around Sarajevo to keep its offensive going. Like other recent government offensives, the campaign is likely to combine sudden attacks with periods of digging in and redeploying troops.

There was fighting all day north and northwest of the city, said U.N. press officer Jim Landale. A Bosnian Serb tank fired 15 shells from Serb-held Ilijas--where the rebels said three people died in government shelling Saturday--on the government-held town of Visoko, Landale said.

Bosnian government radio claimed that large numbers of Bosnian Serb soldiers were captured around Sarajevo. State-run television trumpeted the reported government capture of a Serbian supply route to the northwest of the city, saying government troops had moved within 2 1/2 miles of Sarajevo’s northern outskirts.

The rebel military command claimed Monday that its troops cut government lines on the Nisic plateau northeast of Sarajevo.

It said government soldiers were “fleeing in panic, leaving behind their dead, injured and arms.” The rebel Serbs had pushed back the front lines, it claimed.

But the Bosnian army said all positions were stable and unchanged.

The United Nations could not confirm either side’s claims.

A high-ranking Bosnian army official, insisting on anonymity, conceded that government troops lost some ground on Mt. Treskavica, south of Sarajevo. But he said government troops advanced on another front toward rebel-held Hadzici on the city’s southwestern outskirts.

The Serbs retaliated with shelling. Seven people were killed and 12 were wounded when a shell smashed into a crowd lined up for water in a Sarajevo suburb on Sunday. On Monday, a young mother was killed and her baby son was badly injured by a shell in government-held Hrasnica, on Sarajevo’s western outskirts, hospital officials said.