Word: bihac
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...Friday, July 21, the NATO allies announced a bold new plan to deter Serb aggression. In the days that followed this call to arms, Ratko Mladic, the commander of the rebel Bosnian Serbs, seized and "ethnically cleansed" one "safe area," Zepa, and intensified a brutal assault on another, Bihac. Meanwhile, an eventuality that the U.N. and NATO had dearly hoped to prevent--a widening of the Balkan war--seemed by Friday to have occurred, as Croatia joined the fighting. Not a very good record for any week, much less one that was supposed to be marked by the West...
After Zepa fell, Mladic increased his merciless pressure on Bihac, an isolated U.N. safe area in the northwest. Coordinating efforts with Serb rebels from neighboring Croatia and antigovernment Muslim irregulars, he attacked the so-called Bihac pocket, a cluster of towns and villages that shelters more than 160,000 people, mostly Muslims. He and his allies, totaling about 25,000 men, rolled up a third of the pocket and drew to within two or three miles of the main U.N. camp at Coralici, where 1,300 poorly armed Bangladeshi peacekeepers are holed...
Those Serb attacks, in turn, triggered a counteroffensive by Croatia, across the border from Bihac. Up to 10,000 Croat troops attacked south and west of Bihac, cutting a main supply route between the two Serb strongholds of Knin in Croatia and Banja Luka in Bosnia. Artillery fire sent 5,000 Serb civilians fleeing from the town of Bosansko Grahovo, which the Croats captured on Friday. Croat forces followed up by taking nearby Glamoc and shelling Strmica. Karadzic confirmed that his army had "withdrawn to reserve positions" and ordered full mobilization in the 70% of Bosnia already in his grasp...
...Western allies. The ultimatum to the Serbs to keep their hands off Gorazde, he said, was a "green light" for them to attack elsewhere. He predicted the Serbs would take the pressure off the eastern enclave but keep squeezing the capital, Sarajevo, and possibly try to capture Bihac, the last government outpost in the northwest...
...Croatian army moved through Bosnian territory toward the Croatian Serb capital of Knin firing artillery shells that landed within two miles of the city, as thousands of Serbs fled. The advance came afterSerbs reneged on an agreementto stop attacks on Bosnia's Bihac enclave. U.N. officials urged restraint, fearing that fighting in Croatia could lead to a widening of the war and possibly cause the well-armed forces from Yugoslavia to enter the war. Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic insisted his country had not yet decided to try to retake territory gained by rebel Croatian Serb forces...