Bosnians Try to Break Sarajevo Siege

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  In a blaze of mortar and machine-gun fire, Bosnian government troops launched a new offensive Sunday to break the Serbian siege of Sarajevo.

Casualties were heavy in shelling downtown and on the west side of the city, where government forces were trying to break through Serbian-held territory to reach Sarajevo’s airport, now under U.N. control for an international aid airlift.

U.N. peacekeepers closed the airport to the aid airlift after shells hit the runway.

Dr. Arif Smajkic, head of the Bosnian Health Ministry, said 46 people were killed and 303 wounded in the previous 24 hours of fighting in Bosnia, including 22 dead and 100 wounded in Sarajevo.

In one haunting scene, a victim of mortar fire at a hostel in Sarajevo’s old city remained alive for several minutes after both legs were cut off by a falling wall. His screams faded into deathly quiet, perspiration covering his face, and he was dead by the time he was taken to a hospital.

Smajkic said the city’s main hospital had no water or electricity. Many wounded, mostly soldiers with serious wounds, were being brought in.

“It is very critical at this moment,” he said. “We need water for operations, and we don’t have any.”

The offensive appeared to be a last-ditch attempt by Muslim defenders to gain a military advantage before a peace conference on the Balkans crisis begins Wednesday in London.

The republic’s Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, told reporters that his forces had made headway on the west side, but government military officials gave mixed signals.

Izetbegovic said that even if the new offensive failed, his forces would fight on.

“Sarajevo shall survive,” he said. “We shall fight many, many months more.”

Bosnia’s ethnic Serbs, who want to remain part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, rebelled after the republic’s majority Croats and Muslims voted for independence Feb. 29. Serbs now control two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina.