Refugees Croatia

The United Nations moved Thursday to strengthen its presence along a 160-mile route through Croatia to thwart brutal attacks by vengeful Croats against Serb refugees fleeing the country. At least two people have been killed and hundreds of others--including a carload of Serbian Orthodox nuns--injured since Wednesday, when the Croatian army began evacuating thousands of Croatian Serbs trapped by fighting near the town of Topusko, according to U.N. and witness accounts.

Long after most of the Catholics fled, Father Marko Malovic tends a flock of geese and watches over the medieval monastery that sits like a fortress above the Danube River. He says Mass for the few faithful, fends off "extremists and hooligans" who try to blow up the chapel and safeguards books and relics salvaged from other churches ravaged by war. For more than five years, Malovic has been the only Roman Catholic priest in the Serb-controlled part of Croatia known as Eastern Slavonia.

The Croatian government declared a successful close Monday to its 3 1/2-day offensive against secessionist Krajina Serbs, officially ending one of the most lopsided campaigns in the last four years of fighting in the Balkans. But across Croatia, as tens of thousands of Serb refugees scurried for shelter, fears grew that the military strike may have created--not prevented--new instability in the region. U.N.

The United Nations protested Monday to the Yugoslav government for its deportation of up to 1,000 military-age men who fled the defeated Krajina region in Croatia but were forced back to Serb-held Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Croatian Serbs, refugees who escaped with their families to the rump Yugoslavia--made up of Serbia and Montenegro--after the Croatian army overran the rebellious Krajina, are stranded in the Bosnian Serb city of Bijeljina.

In the largest flight of humanity in four years of Balkan bloodshed, a river of refugees Tuesday poured from the conquered Krajina region of Croatia--and many of them came under new attack. Trapped by advancing armies, tens of thousands of Serb men, women and children on tractors and in horse-drawn carts desperately sought refuge outside a U.N. compound or simply jammed roads awaiting relief.

The Roman Catholic priest had visitors. Two families of Serbian refugees, fleeing Croatia's takeover of their native Krajina, barged into his home and claimed it as their own. The priest was among scores of Croats in this and other towns in northern Serbia and north-central Bosnia who are being expelled or whose homes are being occupied by desperate, angry Serbian refugees, as one brutal ethnic purge gives rise to another.

For about a year now, the Primer family has been riveted to the television. Death counts from their disintegrating homeland of Bosnia drone on inside their Mission Viejo apartment. They flip on the electronic images of destruction upon awakening each morning and shut off the talking heads just before going to bed. Even their 2-year-old daughter Andrea's bright blue eyes recognize the ever-present CNN Headline News on the screen.

The United Nations protested Monday to the Yugoslav government for its deportation of up to 1,000 military-age men who fled the defeated Krajina region in Croatia but were forced back to Serb-held Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Croatian Serbs, refugees who escaped with their families to the rump Yugoslavia--made up of Serbia and Montenegro--after the Croatian army overran the rebellious Krajina, are stranded in the Bosnian Serb city of Bijeljina.

Civil war in the former Yugoslavia has scarred both Zvonko Kutlesa's country and his family these last two years. It has made refugees of cousins and aunts, soldiers of friends and in-laws, has devastated the ancient landscape and culture of this region and has split Kutlesa's own young family between two continents.

Zivko Popovich is a square-faced, gritty little man whose life capsized in the waves of ethnic hate that first began destroying the Yugoslav federation in the summer of 1991. By the time he found his bearings, Popovich and his family had landed in the ruins of this once-rich Danube River port town. Along with thousands of other refugees, they began again.

The Roman Catholic priest had visitors. Two families of Serbian refugees, fleeing Croatia's takeover of their native Krajina, barged into his home and claimed it as their own. The priest was among scores of Croats in this and other towns in northern Serbia and north-central Bosnia who are being expelled or whose homes are being occupied by desperate, angry Serbian refugees, as one brutal ethnic purge gives rise to another.

In a bizarre twist to a tragic, absurd war, 30,000 Bosnian Muslims have been living for four days on the roadside near here, caught in an ethnic no-man's-land that stretches three miles. Desperate and hungry after being driven out of Bosnia-Herzegovina by fellow Muslims 12 miles down the road, they have become stranded in a country consumed by enmity between Croats and Serbs.

As the satellite broadcast begins from Zagreb, the boisterous hum of celebrating Croatians comes suddenly to a dead halt. At the Croatian American Club in San Pedro--where the sign over the door reads, "What have you done for Croatia today?"--two dozen faces turn in unison toward the television set. For the next hour, none will look away. The anchorwoman, speaking their native tongue, is delivering virtually the first good news from home since war broke out in the former Yugoslavia.

U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright showed the U.N. Security Council photographs Thursday that she said depicted mass graves in Bosnia-Herzegovina that hold the bodies of as many as 2,700 civilians murdered by Bosnian Serb forces after two U.N.-protected "safe areas" were overrun last month. She said the photos, combined with witness accounts, provide a "compelling case that there were wide-scale atrocities committed . . . against defenseless civilians." A senior U.S.

The United Nations moved Thursday to strengthen its presence along a 160-mile route through Croatia to thwart brutal attacks by vengeful Croats against Serb refugees fleeing the country. At least two people have been killed and hundreds of others--including a carload of Serbian Orthodox nuns--injured since Wednesday, when the Croatian army began evacuating thousands of Croatian Serbs trapped by fighting near the town of Topusko, according to U.N. and witness accounts.

Milenko Dobrijevic stood among the defeated soldiers of the Krajina Serb army, now dejected members of a miserable mass of refugees, and vowed revenge Thursday. "My grandfather was a Chetnik," he said, referring to the Serbian royalists known for their brutality in both world wars. "He took his revenge, and I will do the same. The first Muslim or Croat I meet, even an innocent one, I will take his house." "And I," proclaimed another of the soldiers, "will kill him."

Relief workers evacuated hundreds of sick and wounded Wednesday from a bombed-out hospital in the Croatian city of Vukovar, where they were trapped for weeks by a Serbian siege. As they were taken from the shattered city, the wounded saw horrifying glimpses of the siege's carnage. There were claims of atrocities--including one report, which could not be independently confirmed, that many children were slain. Hundreds of bodies littered the streets.

Long after most of the Catholics fled, Father Marko Malovic tends a flock of geese and watches over the medieval monastery that sits like a fortress above the Danube River. He says Mass for the few faithful, fends off "extremists and hooligans" who try to blow up the chapel and safeguards books and relics salvaged from other churches ravaged by war. For more than five years, Malovic has been the only Roman Catholic priest in the Serb-controlled part of Croatia known as Eastern Slavonia.

In the largest flight of humanity in four years of Balkan bloodshed, a river of refugees Tuesday poured from the conquered Krajina region of Croatia--and many of them came under new attack. Trapped by advancing armies, tens of thousands of Serb men, women and children on tractors and in horse-drawn carts desperately sought refuge outside a U.N. compound or simply jammed roads awaiting relief.

The wait to return home for Borislav Belsic lasted almost four years. In that time, he lost an eye and most of a leg. When he reached his doorstep, he barely found a roof overhead. But Belsic and a handful of other Croats trickling into this newly recaptured town Monday were not complaining. They were home, after all, something they could only dream about just a few days ago. "I was the first one here," Belsic boasted, flashing a toothless jack-o'-lantern smile.