Land Mine Kills American Soldier in Northern Bosnia

A U.S. soldier was killed Saturday when he apparently triggered a land mine while stationed at a checkpoint in a northern Bosnian town. He was the first American to die during the international peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.

His death came as Secretary of State Warren Christopher visited the region to urge Bosnia’s former warring factions to abide by the terms of their U.S.-brokered peace accord.

Christopher heralded the “excellent” progress in complying with the accord.

“Although there are problems, the net pluses outweigh the negatives,” he said at a news conference in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

The former combatants faced a Saturday deadline to withdraw forces from areas that are passing from the control of one group to another under last year’s Dayton, Ohio, agreement. NATO officials said compliance was on track.

U.S. officials expressed remorse over the death of the American soldier, whose name was being withheld pending notification of his next of kin.

“I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of an American soldier in Bosnia,” President Clinton said while campaigning in Manchester, N.H. “All of our troops should know that today our thoughts and our sincere gratitude are with them, especially on this difficult day.”

Clinton said the soldier’s death did not change his support for the deployment of 20,000 U.S. troops as part of a 60,000-strong peacekeeping mission.

“We will continue to take every precaution we can to protect our troops as they work to secure an enduring peace in Bosnia,” he said.

Learning about the death of the American just hours after he visited Tuzla, where U.S. forces in Bosnia are based, Christopher said the United States must honor the sacrifice of American troops “by doing all that we can to fulfill the promise of peace in this troubled land.”

“The tragic death of one of these fine men hits home especially hard on a day when the faces and voices of our men and women in Bosnia--and the transformation they have achieved in this country--rests so vividly in my mind,” he said.

The soldier was fatally wounded while on duty at a checkpoint in Gradacac, a town about 25 miles north of Tuzla that was devastated during the 3 1/2-year war, according to Col. Robert Gaylord, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

He was evacuated by helicopter and pronounced dead at a field hospital in nearby Zupanja, Croatia.

Military officials in Bosnia and Washington refused to release additional details about the incident or the soldier who was killed.

There is a U.S. camp in Gradacac, but it is not known if the soldier was based there.

A full investigation of the incident was not expected to begin until this morning because of the risks of searching a minefield in the dark, but the officials said they are certain that the mine was one of the millions placed during the war.

“I don’t think it was anything directed against the American forces. It was a mine. Mines have no conscience,” Gaylord said after a news conference at Tuzla’s air base.

The land mines planted throughout the war-torn countryside are considered the greatest threat to the safety of the peacekeepers.

Although the death was the first American fatality, eight other North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops have been killed since NATO started deploying forces to the Balkans in December. A week ago, three British soldiers were killed after detonating a land mine.

On Thursday, a U.S. soldier, 2nd Lt. Robert E. Washburn, 26, stepped on an anti-personnel mine while American forces were inspecting a minefield that supposedly was cleared. Washburn and another soldier were wounded in the incident, but both are recovering, Gaylord said.

NATO forces have received information on 7,000 minefields containing about 700,000 mines, according to Maj. Gen. Mike Willcocks, chief of staff for NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. But conservative estimates put the total number of mines in Bosnia at 3 million.

The buffer zones that NATO troops patrol between the former enemy armies, as well as some of the areas being transferred Saturday, are “riddled with mines, most unmarked,” Willcocks said.

Under the accord, Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats were required to have marked their mines by now. But weather, the sheer volume of mines and a lack of information on where many are have prevented that from happening, Willcocks said.

Saying that Bosnia suffers from “mine pollution,” Willcocks quoted the commander of the Bosnian army, Gen. Rasim Delic, as saying it will take 30 years to rid the country of all its mines.

Before the U.S. troops were sent to Bosnia, many Republicans in Congress resisted the president’s plans to deploy them.

On Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who had opposed Clinton’s plan to send troops but then reluctantly led the congressional effort to approve the president’s initiative, called for a moment of silence for the fallen soldier during a stop in Iowa, where the presidential candidate was campaigning.

“We knew there were going to be risks from land mines,” Dole later told reporters. “I think most of the young men and women there understand. It’s still a tragedy. It is the first American casualty. I hope it is the last.”

At Tuzla’s air base, soldiers who learned of the death expressed sadness but not surprise. Even though there had been no previous fatalities, the soldiers said they have been expecting such news ever since they were deployed.

Spc. Machaela Tompkins, 19, of Lincoln, Neb., who was on guard duty at the base Saturday evening, said the incident was inevitable.

“I knew there were probably going to be people getting killed while we were here,” said Tompkins, adding that she did not expect that it would change soldiers’ attitudes about their mission.

“I think most of us knew the risks when we came,” she said.

Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson and Robin Wright in Sarajevo and Alan C. Miller in Washington contributed to this report.