Hundreds of artillery and mortar shells shook western Sarajevo suburbs Thursday as government troops attacked Serb positions. Serbs retaliated by launching a giant rocket bomb into the city.
One civilian was killed and four were wounded in the early morning shelling, hospital officials said. One shell hit the roof of a downtown apartment building.A French peacekeeper was killed and two of his comrades wounded when their armored vehicle drove over an anti-tank mine, U.N. officials said.
Thursday's rocket bomb landed just 150 yards from the concrete TV building and apartment block that were punctured by similar missiles Wednesday. The blast gouged a crater 13 feet wide in the main road, but witnesses said there were no casualties.
U.N. spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Coward condemned the continued use of these "inaccurate, highly destructive weapons of terror."
Serbs have stepped up their shelling of Sarajevo as the Muslim-led government tries to break the 3-year-old Serb siege of the Bosnian capital.
Government forces apparently made limited gains in six separate infantry attacks on the suburbs and on front lines around Serb-held Ilijas, 15 miles northwest of the Sarajevo, Coward said Thursday. The fiercest attacks centered on a southwestern suburb.
Some 3,400 firing incidents, the highest figure lately, were recorded in the past 24 hours in Sarajevo, the U.N. said.