EVENTS
MUSLIMS, CROATS DO `ETHNIC CLEANSING'
Muslims and Croats fought pitched battles in central Bosnia in the heaviest fighting between the two groups, nominal allies against the Serbs, since civil war erupted a year ago in the former Yugoslav republic. Each side drove out civilians not of their own ethnic group, effectively carrying out "ethnic cleansing" so far practiced mostly by the Serbs. British United Nations peacekeeping troops calculated that up to 200 people had been killed in the battles and several villages were said to be razed to th e ground. The fighting reportedly spread to Kiseljak, 18 miles northwest of Sarajevo. German troops to Somalia
Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government coalition has agreed to provide German troops for the UN humanitarian mission in Somalia. The agreement reached April 20 ended a potentially damaging dispute within the three-party coalition on whether conditions in Somalia were peaceful enough for German soldiers to go there without violating Bonn's post-World War II Constitution. Kenyan wins marathon
Kenyan Cosmas N'deti won the Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 9 minutes, 33 seconds on April 19. Surprisingly, it was not Ibrahim Hussein, the two-time defending champion and three-time winner. N'deti, who swept into the lead about two miles from the finish, was running only his second marathon. There was little surprise in the women's field, as Olga Markova of Russia won for the second year in a row, in 2:25:27, the fastest in the world this year. She became the first women's repeat winner since Rosa Mota of
Portugal won in 1987-88. Khmer Rouge attacks
The UN mission has withdrawn its military observers from two districts in north-central Cambodia, fearing more deadly attacks by Khmer Rouge guerrillas. The UN has blamed the Khmer Rouge for attacks in the past three weeks that have killed eight UN personnel, including a Bulgarian peacekeeper who died April 19. 200th space walk
Two Russians ran into a series of problems April 20 but completed the 200th space walk by Russian and Soviet cosmonauts. Gennady Manakov and Alexander Poleshchuk spent five hours and 25 minutes relocating an electric drive for solar batteries in order to make room for a new module to dock with the orbiting space station Mir. Tass said they had trouble fixing the device in place and succeeded only after considerable effort. Biden: Strike Serbs
US Sen. Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware called April 19 for air strikes against Serbian artillery that has been bombarding Bosnian Muslims, or a deadline for the UN to impound heavy weapons. Biden also said Western forces should destroy Drina River bridges used by Serbian authorities to resupply Bosnian Serbs. He just returned from a visit to the region. South Dakota governor
South Dakota Gov. George Mickelson died April 19 when his state-owned plane slammed into a grain silo while trying to make an emergency landing, killing seven other people, most of them business leaders and state officials. IBM profits off
Struggling computer giant International Business Machines Corporation April 20 reported a $285 million loss for the first quarter, saying sales of its core mainframe computers were off significantly. Revenues in the latest period slipped to $13.1 billion, off 7 percent from $14 billion in the same 1992 quarter.