Peacekeepers battled snipers in Sarajevo for the third straight day Saturday, as the Bosnian capital braced for at least a week of reduced aid shipments.
In neighboring Croatia, there were ominous signs of renewed war if U.N. peacekeepers are forced to begin leaving after the March 31 deadline set by the government for the blue helmets' withdrawal to begin.Snipers in Sarajevo killed one person and wounded two others, including an 11-year-old boy, hospital officials said. The shootings illustrated the hollowness of a truce established Jan. 1 and meant to keep the peace for four months.
Elsewhere in the city, two armored personnel carriers manned by French peacekeepers returned fire after snipers shot in the direction of U.N. soldiers and pedestrians from the "Red House," where government and Serb troops are separated only by a wall.
Other armored vehicles moved slowly across exposed spaces on "Sniper Alley" - Sarajevo's main thoroughfare - providing cover for civilians.
Two civilians were killed by snipers Thursday and five people, including a U.N. peacekeeper, were wounded Friday.
The United Nations "does not have words strong enough to condemn such attacks," said U.N. spokesman Colum Murphy.
Bosnian Serbs recently announced they would not permit aid convoys into Sarajevo for a week, beginning Sunday.
Bosnian Serb police detained five aid workers around noon Saturday after they took a wrong turn on the outskirts of Sarajevo and ran into a Serb checkpoint, a U.N. official said.
The Pharmacy Without Borders employees - an American, three French and one Portuguese - had just delivered supplies to Sarajevo and were heading for the Croatian port of Split.
They were still being held in the Serb barracks of Lukavica, a southern suburb of the besieged Bosnian capital, early Sunday morning. A U.N. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Serbs suspected the aid workers were providing medicine for the Bosnian army.
No other details on the five's identities were available.
Serbs and renewed fighting are also holding up relief convoys destined for the Bihac pocket in northwestern Bosnia. Monique Tuffelli, a U.N. aid worker, said more than 200,000 people were "at the risk of starvation" there.
"It is the existing fact the needy people of Bihac are suffering from malnutrition (and) hunger," she said in a telephone interview from the town of Velika Kladusa.
She reported "fighting everywhere - we can hear shelling, small arms fire and machine-gun bursts right now."
Relenting on one front, the Serbs agreed to permit the United Nations to resupply Dutch peacekeepers in the eastern Muslim enclave of Srebrenica. The 500 troops there have not received supplies since Feb. 12 and were reported to be down to their last tinned rations.
In Zagreb, the United Nations warned of preparations for renewed war in Croatia, saying Croatians and Serbs are digging new trenches on front lines and increasingly violating a truce that has kept them at bay for three years.