1 Killed as Muslims and Serbs Vie for Control of Bosnia Village

Serbs and Muslims battled for control of a northeastern village Tuesday in the worst fighting since the war in Bosnia formally ended a year ago.

NATO blamed both sides for the trouble.

The fighting at Koraj saw Bosnian Serb police using automatic weapons and rifle-propelled grenades and the Muslims firing back in an exchange that left one Muslim dead and one wounded.

There were reports of two Serbs and six other Muslims also being wounded.

By dusk, North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials said that the situation was calm and that both sides had withdrawn from the demilitarized zone where the fighting took place.

Each side blamed the other for the violence in Koraj, once predominantly Muslim and now in Serbian hands.

In a further sign of the tenuous nature of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s peace, security forces loyal to ousted Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic established checkpoints around his compound Tuesday, setting up a possible showdown between civilian and military officials.

Mladic was fired as Bosnian Serb army commander by political leaders who suggested that he had become a liability because he is sought by the U.N. war crimes tribunal. Mladic continued to resist his firing Tuesday.

The fighting at Koraj was the outgrowth of a standoff that began Monday when a group of Muslim refugees from that community pushed from the former front-line village of Celic into Gajevi, a suburb now held by Serbs in the demilitarized zone separating the Serbian and Muslim-Croatian halves of Bosnia.

American and Russian troops had moved in to calm the situation Monday and prevented Serbian police from entering the demilitarized zone. But gunfire and explosions erupted shortly after daybreak Tuesday.

U.S. troops moved in with heavy armor, including 12 Bradley fighting vehicles and Apache attack helicopters, to assist Russian troops also serving with the NATO-led peace force.

U.S. Lt. Col. Jill Morgenthaler said that at no time were NATO-led troops under direct fire, though Russian troops at one point early on were caught in a cross-fire and pulled out briefly.