The Red Cross halted the release of hundreds of Muslim prisoners from Croat detention camps Thursday after Croat forces fired on a convoy of POWs they had just freed.

Sarajevo, meanwhile, came under heavy Serb shelling overnight, and U.N. officials reported a major Serb offensive in the north.Serbs were also stalling on escorting a U.N. aid convoy to the eastern Muslim enclave of Gor-azde despite an understanding reached Monday that they would provide police escorts to all convoys through territory they control.

The Gorazde convoy still hadn't moved by midday after spending the night at Medjedja, about 12 miles northeast of the enclave.

It was halted there because "the Serb police didn't show up," said U.N. peacekeepers' spokesman Idesbald van Biesebroeck. "The excuse they have was they didn't have a car."

Ray Wilkinson, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said the "odds are decreasing" that it would reach Gorazde before darkness prevented safe movement. The enclave has received only two aid convoys since Nov. 7.

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Another convoy was headed to north-central Tesanj, which has seen only three convoys since May, Wilkinson said.

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