Bosnians Continue Battles Despite New Call for Truce

BOSNIAN Serbs and Muslims, snubbing international calls for a truce, reported fighting around the United Nations-designated safe haven of Tuzla in northern Bosnia and the northern front lines of central Bosnia yesterday. Muslim-controlled Sarajevo radio said yesterday the town was shelled overnight. It said four people were wounded when Kalesija, to the east, came under artillery fire. Sarajevo radio said four people were also wounded in the shelling of Maglaj and two more in Gradacac on Saturday.

The Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA said Muslims continued artillery and infantry attacks on villages on Mt. Majevica overlooking Tuzla yesterday for the third consecutive day. Quoting sources in the Bosnian Serb Army, it said more than 100 artillery shells have been fired since yesterday morning from the direction of Teocak, six miles south of Ugljevic, and Godusa and Seljuba, nine miles east of Tuzla. It said the Serbs were holding their positions.

The Yugoslav news agency Tanjug, quoting Bosnian Serb army sources, reported combined Muslim-Croat provocations in the Orasje region, a Croat enclave near the corridor in northern Bosnia vital to the Serbs.

The stepped-up fighting follows a call by foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, and the European Union in Geneva on Friday for a four-month truce to allow negotiations to restart. Both the Muslims and Serbs have rejected the proposal.

Russian ammunitions depot explodes

EMERGENCY workers yesterday put out a fire at a big ammunition depot in Russia's Far East, Interfax news agency said. The depot blew up Saturday with such force that tremors could be felt in the city of Vladivostok, 60 miles away.

Interfax said 3,000 people from the nearby settlement of Novonezhino, who were evacuated in the wake of the blast, were gradually returning to their homes. The agency, quoting the press office of the Far Eastern Fleet, said no one was seriously injured.

At least 200 railway wagons containing ammunition were destroyed, and soldiers' barracks and other wooden buildings were reduced to cinders. Officials said no nuclear or chemical weapons were stored at the depot. Radio Russia quoted a regional official as saying Saturday's blast could not have been caused by spring stubble burning, which has been blamed for past accidents at military bases. The depot blew up exactly two years after a series of explosions at another Vladivostok ammunition dump sent debris from exploding shells over a radius of more than half a mile for three days.