U.N. officials slipped 11 children and six adults through a brief opening in Bosnian battlefronts Saturday for medical treatment in the West.
Six of the children were evacuated from Sarajevo en route to the United States. Five other youngsters were evacuated from the northern city of Tuzla, said an official of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.In Sarajevo, Emina Smajlovic kissed her two young daughters, who had been wounded in a mortar attack on a school, and promised them all would go well.
Then the door of their U.N. armored vehicle swung closed, French soldiers gave the children chocolate and tried to soothe them. Outside, Smajlovic shook with sobs and watched through her fingers as her only children drove away.
"Emina, they are alive and will have a chance to live when they leave this place," a relative said.
On Friday, Ray Wilkinson, a UNHCR spokesman in Sarajevo, said 89 other people were awaiting evacuation for treatment, but their departure was being delayed by the difficulty in finding spaces in foreign hospitals.
He said he thought that obstacles, primarily from Serbs, were being imposed intentionally.
Permission for medical evacuations has often been used as a bargaining tool by the sides in the Bosnian war.