POWs Freed in Bosnia as NATO Fatalities Grow

Moving toward belated fulfillment of last year’s peace accord, two sides in the Bosnian war released additional prisoners Sunday, including survivors of the fall of the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, who told harrowing stories of survival and slaughter.

The prisoner release came as new casualties were reported within the NATO-led peacekeeping force in the Balkans. An American lieutenant was grazed by a sniper’s bullet in the Serb-held Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza; three British soldiers on patrol in central Bosnia were killed after detonating a land mine; and a Swedish soldier died when an armored personnel carrier skidded off a road in the north.

The American, Lt. Shawn H. Watts, 28, of Greenwood, Miss., received a minor flesh wound in the neck. Watts, who is assigned to the 66th Military Intelligence Group in Augsburg, Germany, was shot about dawn in Ilidza, which is scheduled to begin reverting to Muslim-Croat government control Saturday. North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials said the incident was under investigation and declined to speculate on who might have been responsible.

With the death of the three Britons and the Swede, NATO has suffered seven fatalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in less than a week--an Italian and two Portuguese peacekeepers were killed last week in an accidental ordnance explosion. Before that, the only death had been a suicide.

The stalled prisoner-of-war release, however, has tripped up the peace process the most. Following intense international pressure, the Muslim-Croat federation released about 380 Serbian prisoners Saturday and 76 more Sunday. The Serbs, who balked Saturday, freed 80 men and two women from Foca and Vlasenica prisons Sunday, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

That would leave slightly more than 100 still held by both sides out of those who should have been freed by Jan. 19 under the U.S.-brokered accord drafted in Dayton, Ohio.

Red Cross spokesman Pierre Gauthier said there were still several pending cases and that full compliance with the peace agreement could not yet be declared. But it was clear that pressure was having an effect and that progress was being made in the overall release.

Those freed Sunday by the Serbs were delivered to the Sarajevo airport, where they were loaded onto government buses and ferried to the presidency building downtown for reunions with their families.

Dragan Martincevic, a 26-year-old Serb from Sarajevo who fought alongside Muslims in the Bosnian government army, was among those released. He said he was captured during a battle on Treskavica Mountain southwest of Sarajevo in July with other members of his unit.

“They treated us badly, especially me, because I’m a Serb in the Bosnian army and married to a Muslim,” he said. “At least, that is what they said while they were beating me.”

Martincevic said thoughts of his 3-year-old daughter gave him strength during his captivity.

Of his ordeal, he said, “It was terrible, and I would love to forget everything quickly if that is at all possible.”

Six of the men freed by the Serbs on Sunday said they were picked up in neighboring Serbia by authorities who turned them over to Bosnian Serb police, belying Serbia’s pledge to end cooperation with the Bosnian Serbs.

The six were among a group who had fled Srebrenica, a U.N.-designated “safe area” that fell to Bosnian Serb forces in July. Residents were brutally expelled, and up to 7,000 people remain missing in what was probably the single worst atrocity committed in the Bosnian war. Members of this group offered dramatic accounts that, while not new, tended to corroborate stories given by other survivors.

Sulejman Halilovic, 36, escaped from Srebrenica with his 17-year-old son, Almir. But he lost track of Almir in the first of two ambushes by Bosnian Serbs on those trying to flee, and his son’s fate is unknown--as is that of Halilovic’s wife and other relatives he left behind in Srebrenica.

“I don’t know what happened to my family,” he said. “I haven’t heard any word of them. I don’t know what will happen to me or where I will live.”

Halilovic spoke in an old, drab school gymnasium where about 40 of the freed POWs are being housed until the government can resettle them in refugee centers.

Ramiz Mandzic, 20, and his brother, Mevludin, had managed to escape Srebrenica and eventually reach Belgrade, the Serbian capital. There, Serbian police arrested them and delivered them to Bosnian Serb police over the border.

“Before that, we were eating and sleeping in the forest like savages,” Ramiz said, describing their flight from Srebrenica. He told of Bosnian Serb soldiers posing as U.N. peacekeepers, using their distinctive white vehicles and U.N. logos, to try to lure the Srebrenica men into surrender. Both brothers said they saw hundreds of bodies at different points along their forested route.

* SUING TO RETURN: A court has returned homes to some displaced Bosnians. A10