People in Mostar are starving to death, a U.N. official reported Monday, and nine residents of the southwestern city were wounded trying to retrieve airdropped food packets from a minefield.
U.N. relief officials, meanwhile, appealed to Bosnians for patience, fearing that hungry mobs in central towns might seize food from convoys resuming operations after a four-week halt.The first convoys could set off as early as Tuesday, said Peter Kessler of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
"The humanitarian situation is drastically deteriorating," he said, "Failure to get these convoys going again will mean the loss of a great many lives."
One of the worst-off places is Mostar, split in two by seven months of fighting between Bosnian Croats and the Muslim-led government.
Kessler said health officials in the besieged Muslim half of the city reported an unspecified number of deaths by starvation. Many of the sector's 50,000 residents are living in basements because most buildings have been destroyed.
"The people of east Mostar would give their right arms to be in Sarajevo in the coming months," Kessler said, noting that the besieged capital at least has sporadic gas and electricity, and a steady flow of airlifted aid.
Lt. Col. Bill Aikman, a spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers, said nine residents of eastern Mostar were wounded Sunday when they passed through a minefield while trying to retrieve airdropped food. One of the Spanish peacekeepers who evacuated them was wounded by shell fragments during the rescue mission, Aikman said.
It was not immediately known how badly the wounded were hurt.
The United Nations suspended food deliveries to central Bosnia on Oct. 26, the day after soldiers killed a U.N. convoy driver in a Muslim-Croat combat zone.