Muslim defenders recovered Thursday from a multipronged Serb attack on Sarajevo, and the commander of a pummeled suburb said hungry people in his district were eating grass.
As the fear of hunger intensified in the besieged Bosnian capital, a U.N. general prepared to meet with rival factions on opening its airport to relief flights. The city's 300,000 residents are desperate for food and medicine.In Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, U.S. Embassy staff members and their families formed a convoy of cars in preparation for a journey to Hungary. Just 35 embassy personnel are expected to stay on.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on Yugoslavia, now consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro, on May 30 over its fomenting of violence in Bosnia.
Sunrise brought a lull in fighting to Sarajevo. Artillery boomed occasionally, but the sounds of battle were lighter than overnight, when Serb attackers and Muslim defenders fought with cannons, machine guns and rifles.
Residents used the relative calm to scurry for what food remained in the city, blockaded for weeks by Serbs seeking to make part of Sarajevo capital of their own independent republic within Bosnia.
In Dobrinja, a western suburb partially overrun by Serb fighters on Wednesday, the commander of the suburb's defenders said its 35,000 people were receiving sparse rations and will run out of food in "days, maybe a week."
"We are eating every kind of grass that grows in Dobrinja parks," said the commander.