February 17, 1996
Web posted at: 11 p.m. EST (0400 GMT)
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- After a tense standoff, U.S. forces on NATO duty in Bosnia won access to a Bosnian Serb heavy weapons depot Saturday after calling in helicopter gunships and warplanes in a show of force, an American Broadcasting Corp. television crew reported.
U.S. Col. Andy Batiste warned resisting Bosnian Serb officers that he would order immediate airstrikes if his troops were not granted access to the compound in Han Pijesak, northeast of Sarajevo.
Saturday's incident, which occurred as NATO began an effort to seize heavy weapons from the formerly warring factions, was the first reported case where the NATO-led force has threatened to unleash the alliance's fire power against the Serbs.
Serb authorities had twice earlier refused to allow the NATO-led peace force to visit the site.
ABC said the search uncovered a large store of howitzers, artillery shells, and cases of ammunition, more than NATO suspected was housed on the site.
On Friday, NATO's top man in Bosnia, U.S. Adm. Leighton Smith, accused the Muslim-led Bosnian government of having direct links to what the alliance said was a terrorist training camp.
NATO raided the camp, a former ski chalet, and found it packed with sophisticated weapons, booby-trapped toys, household items, and kidnapping plans.
Officials said 13 men detained at the camp, including three Iranians, had been released to Bosnian authorities.
At least one person was seriously wounded Saturday when a sniper sprayed fire on two buses traveling into a Serb-held suburb of Sarajevo, just weeks before the area is to be handed over to the Muslim-led Bosnian government.
A woman passenger returning home for the first time in four years was reportedly hit in the kidneys and rushed to a hospital. She was in Bosnia to attend a family funeral.
The bus had come from Germany via Croatia and was attacked as it drove through the Ilidza suburb, where two similar incidents have occurred since Wednesday.
Hours after the first shooting Saturday, a second bus was fired upon in the same area, but it was unclear whether anyone had been injured.
Snipers in Ilidza have wounded three people in two attacks on buses earlier this week in open defiance of the two-month-old Bosnian peace accord.
The suburb was in Serb hands during the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, and tensions there are running high because it is to be fully transferred to the Muslim-led Bosnian government next month. Under a plan worked out by the Bosnian peace coordinator Carl Bildt, the first stages of the handover will begin within a week.
Fearing for their future under Bosnian government authority, about 800 Bosnian Serb civilians abandoned the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici Saturday and left for an uncertain future in a town in eastern Bosnia, Serb television reported.
Women, children, and many of the elderly -- many weeping -- left on buses for the Serb-controlled town of Bratunac.
On Serb television, Bosnian Serb leader Aleksa Buha urged his people to leave because, he said, "he international community will not ensure the safety of Serb Sarajevo."
Saturday's exodus of 800 families was the first organized flight of Sarajevo's Serbs, who fear retribution from a Muslim-led government after their five city districts transfer to government authority.
The mass flight came as international mediators summoned Balkan leaders to Rome to underline the need for all sides to stick to the Bosnian peace accord.
AP contributed to this report.
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