Quote from Forum Archives on March 27, 1999, 4:31 am

Posted by: lifeunlimited <lifeunlimited@...>

March 27, 1999

Again, as earlier this week, I am taking the liberty of forwarding the
latest issue of a newsletter to which I subscribe. Because of our
ministry in Croatia and Bosnia, it has been helpful in keeping us
informed of details we don't always pick up from the news media.

You may not be interested in this, and I have no intention of sending
future copies.

If you would like to receive it regularly, simply follow the "subscribe"
directions at the end of the letter.

I'll send my regular letter late Sunday night.

In Christ,

Bob Tolliver ---- Rom 1:11-12
Life Unlimited Ministries
E-mail: [email protected]

--------- Begin forwarded message ----------

From: [email protected] (slm)
To: [email protected]
Subject: This Week in Bosnia: SPECIAL UPDATE
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 23:22:50 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>

March 26, 1999

THIS WEEK IN BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA: SPECIAL UPDATE

YUGOSLAV JETS SHOT DOWN OVER BOSNIA. Two Yugoslav MiG-29 fighter
jets were shot down after entering Bosnian air space Friday, NATO
officials said, apparently while on a mission to bomb NATO peacekeeping
soldiers in Bosnia. NATO officials said they were still searching for
the Yugoslav pilots.
NATO regularly patrols Bosnian air space under provisions of the
Dayton peace accords.
The planes went down near the village of Teocak, south of
Bijeljina near the border with Yugoslavia, Agence France-Press reports.
``Witnesses and local news reports said wreckage was scattered in
three places along a narrow strip of Bosnia's Serb republic,''
according to Associated Press.

AIR STRIKES CONTINUE IN YUGOSLAVIA. NATO launched a third wave of
air attacks on Yugoslav military targets today, Western military
officials said.
Friday marked the first daylight attacks of the operation, which
included targets in the suburbs of Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital.
Yugoslav government radio reported eight heavy explosions around the
capital.
``One of the target areas was Topcinder, a wooded area that is
less than a kilometer (half-mile) from the Belgrade district of Dedinje
where [Serbian President Slobodan] Milosevic has his official
residence,'' AFP notes.
By nightfall, Zoran Popovic from Yugoslavia's Social Democratic
party in Belgrade told CNN he'd heard 10 to 15 loud explosions and had
reports that a pharmaceutical plant had been hit, releasing some toxic
materials.
About 50 targets were damaged in the first two bombing raids,
Western military officials reported, including ``air defense facilities
in Novi Sad and Batajnica in Serbia and Podgorica in Montenegro,'' CNN
said.
Montenegro, which along with Serbia comprises what's left of
Yugoslavia, had wanted to stay out of the conflict, and its president
had initially demanded no Montenegrin soldiers be deployed to fight
against NATO forces.

ATROCITIES MOUNT IN KOSOVO. Serb military forces are stepping up
their murder and terrorization of Kosovo civilians in reprisal for NATO
military attacks, according to reports from human-rights workers and
Kosovar refugees.
Some ethnic Albanian community leaders have disappeared, while
Amnesty International reports that a prominent ethnic Albanian human-
rights lawyer, Bajram Kelmendi, was killed along with his two sons
after being taken away by Serb police on Thursday.
Human-rights activists believe Serb forces are targeting
political, educational and cultural leaders for arrest or execution.
``Reports of killings and lootings committed by Serb forces came
in throughout the day, indicating an escalation of an offensive begun
days before the start of the NATO bombings -- which are designed to end
the violence,'' ABC news reported.

The UNHCR said refugees told of people massacred in the
southwestern village of Goden, AFP said. And, U.S. State Dept.
spokesman James Rubin said American spy satellites captured images of
Serb soldiers executing the Goden villagers, according to UPI, as well
as shelling the village of Podujevo and separating men of fighting age
from other Kosovars.
During the war in Bosnia, thousands of Muslim men were separated
from other villagers and later executed.
"There are increasing reports of atrocities against Albanian
civilians in Kosovo," Rubin said, according to AFP. "We are extremely
alarmed by these reports."
Meanwhile, there are reports that the fighting spread briefly
across the border into Albania, where some villages have been shelled
by Serb forces.

``In reports largely confirmed by NATO intelligence officials,
members of the Kosovo Liberation Army said today that 30,000 Serbian
troops massed along the borders of the ethnic-Albanian province were
ordered to begin their offensive once alliance airstrikes started
Thursday,'' UPI said.
``KLA representatives in the United States and in Kosovo tell
United Press International that Serbian troops and paramilitary police
have surrounded several major towns -- including Podjevo, Djahova,
Skenderaj, Suva Reka and Chirez -- and are pounding them with
artillery, rockets and tank fire.
``A KLA field commander, reached by telephone from Washington at a
location he identifies as `near Suva Reka,' said the shelling is so
intense in the central Kosovo town that corpses can not been removed
from the streets.
``The ethnic-Albanian guerrilla, who asked not to be named, said
the situation in the countryside was ``absolute chaos,'' with refugees
crisscrossing the countryside in search of a safe haven from the
marauding Serbs.''

U.S., BRITISH MISSIONS PLUNDERED IN SRPSKA. ``Bosnian Serbs
angered by NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia on Friday trashed branch
offices of the British and U.S. embassies and damaged the French and
German missions here,'' Agence France-Press reports.
The buildings had been mostly evacuated before the air strikes
began, although one guard was seriously injured in another
demonstration Thursday, AFP said.
``US officials and NATO troops in Bosnia have been threatened in
the wake of the NATO strikes against Yugoslavia,'' according to AFP.
Serb demonstrators also set fire to the U.S. embassy in nearby
Macedonia, another former Yugoslav republic.

RUSSIA BREAKS RELATIONS WITH NATO. ``Russia today told NATO's top
diplomatic official and its senior military representative in Moscow to
leave the country,'' AP reported today.

REFUGEES FLEE SANDJAK. An estimated 2,000 people have fled
Sandjak, a region of Yugoslavia with a large Muslim population. Refugee
agencies believe the men are fleeing forced mobilization into the
Yugoslav army, and not any atrocities that have spread there from the
fighting in Kosovo, according to AFP.

MORE AIRSPACE CLOSED TO CIVILIAN TRAFFIC. The organization that
controls European civilian airspace has shut down areas over
Yugoslavia, Albania, Macedonia and the southern Adriatic Sea, Agence
France-Presse reported.
``Most western carriers cancelled flights to Belgrade and Zagreb
and modified routes to Athens, Istanbul, Ankara and the Middle East,
after NATO launched air strikes on Yugoslavia,'' AFP said.
``Travellers with flights to and from Zagreb were being taken by
bus over the border to Maribor airport in neighbouring Slovenia, and
all other domestic Croatian airports were closed, an airport official
told AFP.
``Train and bus travel in Croatia was also affected, and goods
traffic across the border into Serbia had stopped, an official at the
station told AFP.''

OTHER BOSNIA NEWS .... CROATIAN LEADER INJURED BY CAR BOMB. Jozo
Leutar, deputy interior minister of the Muslim-Croat federation, was
severely injured in a car-bomb attack earlier this month in Sarajevo.
Croats were outraged by the attack, which has worsened
already strained relations between them and Bosnia's Muslims.
``Bosnian Croat police working at Bosnian Muslim majority police
stations in the southwest have been leaving their jobs,'' UPI reports.
The UN International Police Task Force has been working with varied
success to integrate police departments across the country. ''
Croats have also stepped up calls for their own, Croatian republic
within Bosnia. Croat nationalists attempted to carve out a ``Herceg-
Bosna'' republic for themselves through a wave of ethnic cleansing
during the Bosnian war, until U.S. pressure forced Croat leaders into
an alliance with Bosnians fighting for a unitary, multi-ethnic country.
International investigators say it is not clear whether the attack
was ethnically motivated, or connected to organized crime. Leutar was
known to be investigating corruption and organized crime activities in
the city, according to international officials.

SERBS SEEK BRCKO APPEAL. The Bosnian Serb parliament has voted to
appeal an arbitration ruling over the town of Brcko to the
Internaitonal Court of Justice in the Hague.
Serbs gained control of the town after murdering or expelling
almost all its non-Serb inhabitants, who were a majority before the
war.
A U.S. mediator ruled that the town should be governed by all the
country's ethnic groups.
Outgoing Srpska prime minister Milorad Dodik said earlier this
month Serbs would begin implementing the arbitration ruling, which puts
the strategic town under the control of both Bosnian republics. But
nationalists claim the Serb assembly must vote to do so before it can
take effect.

CANADIAN ARRESTED FOR BOSNIAN WAR CRIME. ``In a stunning
international arrest, a Canadian has been charged as part of the
Bosnian-Serb army that captured United Nations peacekeepers and used
them as human shields in 1995,'' the Toronto Star reports.
`` Nicholas Nikola Ribic, 25, of Edmonton, was arrested by German
police on Feb. 20 in the city of Mainz, and now is being held at the
request of the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and Canadian justice
authorities for extradition to Canada.
``Ribic stands charged under Canada's Criminal Code with two
counts of kidnapping and two counts of hostage-taking.''
____________________________
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[email protected]

``This Week in Bosnia-Hercegovina'' can be found on the World Wide
Web at www.applicom.com/twibih/

The Bosnia Action Coalition gratefully acknowledges the donation
of server space and mailing-list services from Applied Computing
Solutions, Inc. (www.applicom.com).

--The Bosnia Action Coalition

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