U.N. aid officials worried about how to feed Sarajevo on Thursday after the suspension of the airlift to the besieged city.
The United Nations halted relief flights Wednesday after snipers wounded four French soldiers and an American relief plane was hit by a machine gun bullet.Wednesday, a French transporter evacuating the wounded French was fired at. The airport was unlikely to be reopened before the weekend.
Tony Land, head of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office in Sarajevo, said the airlift suspension was "particularly serious at this time."
Fighting throughout Bosnia in recent weeks, particularly in the southwest and in central Bosnia, has prevented the UNHCR from bringing in aid overland from Croatia.
Land said the airlift had been the source of about 90 percent of the aid reaching Sarajevo. But even that is far below the needs of the city's 380,000 residents.
"We are never able to bring in enough food for complete rations for the city," Land said. "That means we have no reserves whatsoever."
Land said U.N. observers could not decisively establish who was firing at the planes because the aircraft fly within shooting range of both Serb-and Bosnian government-held territory.
Sarajevo was quiet except for sporadic sniper fire Thursday. But Sarajevo radio reported Serb-Muslim fighting near the northern corridor linking Bosnian Serb territories to Serbia.
Mortar rounds killed 15 people Tuesday at a soccer game in a Sarajevo suburb. U.N. peacekeepers said impact studies established that the fire came from Serb positions.
But the Bosnian Serb military Thursday "categorically" denied it was responsible.
(Additional information)
8 killed in rampage
A soldier escaped from a military stockade in southern Yugoslavia and killed seven colleagues early Thursday before committing suicide, a military statement said.
The Yugoslav army soldier, Jozef Meneder, also wounded four other men in the rampage at a military base near Vranje, 175 miles southeast of Bel-grade.
Meneder, who had been jailed for a barracks brawl, broke out of his cell and attacked a guard with an ax, said the statement carried by the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency. His rank was not given.
He took the injured guard's automatic rifle and opened fire on a group of sleeping soldiers. A staff sergeant and five men died on the spot. Another soldier died later of injuries.