Word: serb
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...High Commissioner for Refugees informed the Security Council that Serb forces were attacking the settlements around Cerska and Srebrenica and driving out the villagers. "Civilians, women, children and old people are being killed, usually by having their throats cut," reported the High Commissioner, Sadako Ogata. In fact Ogata, like other U.N. officials and foreign journalists, had no firsthand knowledge of what was happening. The world was relying on what ham-radio operators in the Muslim towns were broadcasting. But, she said, "if only 10% of the information is true, we are witnessing a massacre...
...local Serb commander in Bosnia responded that such reports were "wrong and malicious," and offered safe passage out of the region for the thousands of refugees, many of them camped in the open. But amateur-radio broadcasters continued to report heavy artillery fire falling on dozens of blazing hamlets. One Bosnian army officer in Cerska appealed for international help at least to "save 2,500 wounded, if nobody cares about the genocide of 52,000 people in this area...
...Serbs often offer safe passage out of areas they are attacking, but Bosnian and U.N. officials regard the ploy as part of the Serb campaign to rid the area of non-Serbs. Serb officials seemed to confirm that with a statement that Muslims and Serbs "will not live together ever again." In spite of the U.N.'s reluctance to assist in the "cleansing," General Philippe Morillon, head of the peacekeeping force in Bosnia, went to Cerska on Friday to try, apparently unsuccessfully, to negotiate an evacuation...
Surprised by the Serb onslaught and its timing, officials in Washington insisted that the U.S. airdrops had not triggered the attack. Pentagon and State Department spokesmen argued that the Serbs were carrying out battle plans made long before. But another Administration expert on Yugoslavia sees it differently. "Of course there's a connection," he says. "From the Serb viewpoint, the best way to stop the airdrops is to 'cleanse' the area." The delivery of food may have encouraged Serb fighters, who had been trying to starve the Muslims out of territory Serbs wish to occupy, to mount a more aggressive...
Defense Secretary Les Aspin had explained the drops as a way to demonstrate the West's determination to get relief supplies into the Muslim enclaves by ) any means possible, so the Serb forces might as well unblock the roads and allow the U.N. truck convoys to pass. Though a considerable part of each U.S. drop fell on or near Serb positions, the Serbs apparently decided to cut off entirely the resupply of their enemies by seizing the enclaves...