From: U15231@uicvm.uic.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Subject: AP News Report
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:26:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: uicvm.92282.122616U15231
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago

From: BOSNET@math.msu.edu (Bosnian Electronic Network)
Subject:    AP-News_Report
Reply-To: saiti@math.msu.edu
Organization: BOSNET (Bosnian Electronic Network)

Contribution by: Croatian-News


Women, Children Speak of Terrors of Ethnic Cleansing
By JOHN DANISZEWSKI
Associated Press Writer
    TRAVNIK, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Hasnija Halilovic
said the Serb fighters came in the night, wearing black
masks.
    They lined up about 200 Muslim women and children at
gunpoint in three rows between a Muslim home and piled the
house's contents nearby, she recalled.
    Then both the furniture and the house were set ablaze.
    For four hours, with fires in front of them and behind,
the women and children stood helpless, screaming and
pleading for their lives. They cried. They choked on the
smoke. Their captors taunted them, threatening to shoot.
    Finally, they were let go.
    ``No one was killed, but they were beating us,'' said
Mrs. Halilovic, 60, her blue eyes ablaze with anger.
    The scene occurred two weeks ago in Kljuc, a northern
Bosnian town where thousands of Muslims from surrounding
areas have been herded into a ghetto since last spring.
    Now, in another example of the process known as ``ethnic
cleansing,'' the last Muslims are being expelled by Serb
occupiers from their land and sent to Travnik, one of the
few remaining Muslim-held cities in Bosnia.
    A key part of ethnic cleansing is to instill terror, and
the Serbs in Kljuc succeeded.
    Mrs. Halilovic's daughter-in-law, Zijada, said the shock
sent her into labor. The infant at her breast, Rashid, was
born the next day.
    Dressed in a green scarf and five layers of shirts,
sweaters and skirts, Mrs. Halilovic stood Sunday with about
1,000 other bedraggled figures outside a decaying secondary
school, now their temporary home in Travnik.
    On this bleak, rainy day, they waited for their daily
meal: rice.
    This front-line Muslim city, squeezed into a narrow
mountain valley adorned with a dozen minarets, has become a
main refuge for people forced from their homes in Serb-
controlled areas of Bosnia.
    The city is patrolled by Croatian and Muslim troops,
including units of the ``Muslim Forces'' who affect the
bravado of Middle Eastern guerrillas by wrapping their heads
in traditional headdresses.
    An occasional rifle-toting volunteer from the Middle
East or North Africa also can be seen in the streets,
lending credence to Serb claims that ``mujahedeen'' from
Islamic countries are fighting on the Muslim side. But such
foreigners resolutely refused to talk to journalists.
    There are now about 25,000 refugees in Travnik, normally
a city of 35,000, said Meris Zulic of the humanitarian
organization Merhamet. If the Serbs complete the ethnic
cleansing around Banja Luka, capital of the self-proclaimed
Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 80,000 more Muslims
and 40,000 Croats could join them, he said.
    There already are shortages of food, shelter, toilets
and clean water. With winter fast approaching, officials
worry about bitter cold and disease.
    Travnik has not been shelled recently, but nearby areas
have been bombed, said Zeir Krnjic, a Muslim forces
commander.
    Mrs. Halilovic and other veterans of ethnic cleansing
described their exodus from Serb-held areas as brutal.
    After their night between the flames, the women and
children holed up for another week in the crowded Muslim
quarter of Kljuc.
    Then, on a Thursday, about 3,000 Muslims from Kljuc and
surrounding villages were put into 10 buses and eight
trucks.
    As they were put aboard, they were beaten by about 150
soldiers who demanded money or stole from their meager
belongings, Mrs. Halilovic said.
    ``Then they were shooting at the trucks,'' she said.
``One truck didn't arrive at all and we don't know what
happened to those people.''
    At the frontier of Serb-controlled territory, she said,
the refugees were ordered to abandon their remaining
belongings and told to start walking over mountainous
terrain toward Travnik, about 12 miles away.
    After five hours on a treacherous track with steep
cliffs, they reached a unit of Croatian soldiers.
    Details of such journeys are impossible to verify, but
they mesh with accounts from numerous other refugees and
Western journalists who have traveled with them.
    Zulic said large groups of such people have been
arriving every two or three days since May, despite promises
of Bosnia's Serbs to curb ethnic cleansing.
    Croats and Muslims also have been accused of purging
areas of other ethnic groups, but the Serbs have been
condemned internationally most often.
    He said he knows that at least 10 people traveling in
Mrs. Halilovic's group died because the Serb side later
offered to trade their bodies for a group of Serbs in
Travnik.



NO-FLY ZONE RESOLUTION AT A GLANCE
     UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7, Reuter - Following are the key
elements in a draft Security Council resolution banning
military aircraft over Bosnia-Herzegovina. The document,
obtained by Reuters, was approved by the United States,
Britain and France on Wednesday.
     The document
     -- Establishes a ban on military flights, excluding any
aircraft relating to U.N. operations or supporting them.
     -- Requests U.N. forces to monitor compliance,
including placing observers on airfields, wherever
necessary.
     -- Requests U.N. forces to set up an inspection
mechanism to make sure all flights to and from Bosnia do not
violate Security Council resolutions.
     -- Calls on all states to take measures to help U.N.
forces, including technical monitoring and ``other
capabilities.''
     -- In case of violations, the council would pledge to
``consider urgently'' further measures to enforce the ban.
  REUTER EL BRO BN
Reut18:34 10-07

 Serbs Shell Other Towns After Capturing Key City in
Northern Bosnia
By JOHN DANISZEWSKI
Associated Press Writer
    SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Serb fighters were
reported cleaning out the last pockets of resistance in a
northern strategic city on Wednesday, and they widened their
offensive with intensified shelling throughout the region.
    The lightning capture of Bosanski Brod on the Croatian
border was a major victory for the Serbs, who are seeking to
set up their own republic within Bosnia possibly as a
prelude to linking up with Serbia.
    The Serbian advances mean they have taken control of 70
percent of Bosnia in the 7-month-old civil war, and their
offensive sought to gain further territory before winter.
    More than 14,000 people have been killed in Bosnia since
Bosnian Serbs rebelled against a vote in February by
majority Muslims and Croats to secede from Serbian-dominated
Yugoslavia.
    The fall of Bosanski Brod, the last major government-
held town in northern Bosnia, apparently was part of a
Serbian offensive aimed at occupying more Bosnian territory
before winter sets in.
    There was major shelling in Sarajevo in what the city's
radio called a ``hellish'' morning.
    But there was major fighting in the north, according to
Croatian radio reports:
    _Heavy Serb artillery blasted the region around Zupanja,
35 miles east of Slavonski Brod.
    _The city of Gradacac was hit by hundreds of missiles
and cluster bombs.
    _Serb forces 12 miles north of Gradacac were caught in a
Muslim-Croat pincer, forcing them to retreat and leave 10
artillery pieces behind.
    Elsewhere, Serb missiles targeted Bihac, a Bosnian
border town just 40 miles south of Zagreb, Croatia's
capital. Maglaj, 60 miles north of Sarajevo, was bombed by
Serb warplanes. Mostar, 100 miles southwest of the Bosnian
capital, was rocked by artillery barrages.
    The Serbs had significantly improved their position with
the capture on Tuesday of Bosanski Brod, widening the
corridor between the territories they control in eastern and
western Bosnia.
    Officials in Slavonski Brod, a Croatian city across the
Sava River, speaking on condition of anonymity, said small-
arms fire and the boom of artillery continued to sound from
the neighboring Bosnian town late Wednesday.
    They said Serb troops apparently were moving from house
to house, firing machine gun bursts inside and throwing in
hand grenades to clean up last pockets of suspected
resistance.
    AP photographer Zoran Bozicevic said dozens of houses
set on fire by the Serb invaders blazed in Bosanski Brod. A
high-rise apartment building still burned Wednesday morning.
    The bridge across the Sava River was blown up before
dawn Wednesday, destroying what for months had been a path
to relative safety for tens of thousands of refugees.
    Just hours before its destruction, at least 5,000
refugees and Muslim-Croat forces used the bridge to flee the
Serb advance.
    The Serb offensive appeared aimed at eliminating the
entire Bosnian enclave along the river border. The enclave