The Bosnia Crisis: UN comes under attack in capital

SARAJEVO - Four French soldiers were wounded in two mortar attacks on UN headquarters in Sarajevo yesterday, as calls for military intervention increased. 'This was a direct attack on the United Nations,' the UN spokesman, Mik Magnusson, said after the overnight shelling. 'It was unquestionably intentional.

A French warrant officer, Olivier Gnerucci, said: 'People were running and the injured were screaming, people needed help . . . then there was a second and a third explosion as we were picking up the wounded.' One shell punched a hole through 20in-thick reinforced concrete into the basement of the building. A shell crashing into a suburb of Sarajevo killed five people and injured at least 20 others yesterday evening as Western powers came under increased pressure to intervene in the war in Bosnia. It was the worst single incident in a day of fierce fighting in the capital.

However, the deputy commander of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in former Yugoslavia, Lieutenant-General Philippe Morillon, said he was sure no military solution was possible. General Morillon announced he had successfully negotiated the creation of humanitarian corridors from Split, on the Adriatic coast, to Sarajevo, and from Sarajevo to the south-east Bosnian town of Gorazde.

Previous attempts to bring in relief have been interrupted by renewed fighting. The UN closed Sarajevo airport earlier this week and heavy fire there overnight augured badly for its scheduled re- opening today. The mortar attacks on the UN, launched from Serb- occupied hills around Sarajevo, added to the outrage sparked by allegations of Serb-run concentration camps where Muslims and Croats are reportedly being tortured and killed.

Yesterday, fighting raged throughout Bosnia, where the government is struggling to maintain the territorial integrity of the newly independent republic. Sarajevo has this week undergone some of the most intense fighting in the four-month war, and Western leaders are coming under pressure to try to break the spiral of ethnic violence in the republic.

President George Bush and other Western leaders have pinned blame for the fighting on aggression by Serbia, which has been subjected to UN sanctions for two months. Serbian officials say they are being made scapegoats, and accuse the international community of inflicting suffering on refugees on their territory through sanctions.

LONDON - Two British Jewish organisations have reached agreement with the warring groups in Bosnia to permit the evacuation of the 750 Jews living in Sarajevo, the organisations said yesterday, AFP reports.

Under the agreement, concluded last week during a visit to London by officials of Bosnia's Muslim, Croat and Serb communities, a ceasefire will be arranged to enable the evacuation to proceed, a spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said.

(Photograph omitted)