"This new escalation of violence, if not stopped, will lead to a total and inevitable destruction of your country," Morillon said at a news conference. He appealed to the people of Bosnia to "contact their local military and political leaders and urge them to put a stop to this madness."
"If this cannot be achieved," he warned, then the U.N. military force, "with rage and sadness in its heart, will have no option but to withdraw." About 8,000 U.N. troops are in Bosnia to protect deliveries of food and medicine to refugees and besieged towns.
Shortly before the general issued his appeal, the U.N. refugee relief agency halted overland aid deliveries through central Bosnia after Croatian militiamen and civilians attacked a private aid convoy bound for the ethnically mixed northern city of Tuzla.
Bosnian Croats shot at and looted stranded sections of the convoy near the central Bosnian town of Vitez despite pledges by Croatian militia commanders to guarantee the trucks safe passage in leaving the area, a U.N. spokesman said.
British army units attached to the U.N. military force in Bosnia escorted some 100 of the convoy's vehicles out of the Croatian-held area around Vitez, but Croatian looters continued to force some vehicles from the main road between Travnik and Zenica, U.N. officials said.
At least nine truck drivers have been killed and dozens more taken hostage since Thursday, when Croatian militiamen and civilians attacked the convoy.