Serbs Kill 5 in Pounding of Sarajevo : Bosnia: Rebels attack journalists, apartment building. It was the 12th consecutive day of shelling in capital.

Journalists became the latest civilian casualties in the Bosnian Serbs’ relentless bombardment of this capital when a rocket on Wednesday slammed into the headquarters for national and foreign broadcast press.

A crowded apartment complex was also hit, the concrete walls blown away from three floors of one high-rise building. In all, five people were killed and at least 38 wounded.

It was the 12th consecutive day Sarajevo has been shelled by Serb separatists, following the government’s decision to launch a major offensive aimed at cracking the Bosnian Serbs’ 38-month siege of this city.

Much of government-controlled Bosnia-Herzegovina had been bracing for an onslaught Wednesday because June 28 is the Serbs’ most revered holiday. It marks the 606th anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Field, in which Serbs suffered their final defeat at the hands of invading Turks.

In their hyperbolic rhetoric, Serbs liken that battle to today’s fight against the Muslim-led Bosnian government, even though the international community now views the Bosnian Serbs as the aggressors.

That army Wednesday bombarded the western edge of Sarajevo after the government opened an infantry and artillery attack outside western suburbs, an area considered the most likely point the government army could break separatist Serb lines.

But it was civilians who paid the price.

At the vast Alipasno Polje apartment complex, where thousands of Sarajevo natives and Muslim refugees live, four people were killed when a Bosnian Serb rocket ripped through three upper floors of one building. The explosion peeled concrete from the building frame, twisted metal girders and hurled debris, furniture and clothing for yards.

News agency photographers who were the first to arrive at the scene said they saw three bodies, including one cut in half and lying in the middle of the street. A fourth person was later reported to have died.

“We pulled out an old lady completely covered in blood,” said Associated Press photographer Santiago Lyon. “My colleagues took her to the hospital. I don’t think she made it.”

Hundreds of terrified residents who survived crowded into the building’s basement, where they spent the entire day as shells continued to fall outside. The shelter was pitch-dark, and about an inch or two of water had seeped in and covered the stone floor, where people were forced to squat or stand--and wait.

“It’s like the end of the world,” said 21-year-old student Elma Keketovic.

In the last 12 days of Bosnian Serb bombardment, about 50 civilians have been killed and more than 250 wounded. The rebels have shelled hospitals, playgrounds and the lines people stand in to collect water--a result of the Bosnian Serbs’ having also cut off water, electricity and gas to the city of 350,000.

The destruction seems particularly demoralizing now because many Sarajevans were lulled into a sense of tranquillity and relief during a four-month truce that ended May 1, after months of relative peace during which the United Nations and NATO seemed to be getting tough with the Serb separatists. The United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had forced the Bosnian Serbs to relinquish their heavy weaponry around Sarajevo and had created “safe areas,” like the capital, that were protected by NATO air power.

But after last month’s hostage crisis, when the Bosnian Serbs captured about 370 U.N. peacekeepers, the United Nations surrendered the heavy weapons back to the Serbs and essentially gave up efforts to sustain the safe areas.

“There were hard times before but nothing like this--this is really the worst,” said Keketovic, the young woman cowering in her shelled apartment’s waterlogged basement. “Before May, there was a kind of peace. . . . We had hoped it wouldn’t be like the years before, but now it is.”

Journalists were learning just that. At midmorning, Bosnian Serbs fired a rocket-propelled aircraft bomb at the building that houses all radio and television agencies working here.

One police officer was killed and more than 30 people were injured in the blast.

Times staff writer William Tuohy in London contributed to this report.