Yugoslavia Armed Forces

Federal army troops stepped up patrols in eastern Croatia on Saturday after another person was killed in ethnic violence between Serbs and Croats, raising the three-day death toll to 17. A large column of tanks and armored vehicles was reported moving toward the town of Vukovar late Saturday after Belgrade television reported that a Serbian man was shot dead by Croatian police at a barricade in the nearby village of Sotin.

Ethnic Albanian guerrillas brought their insurgency from Macedonia's countryside to its second-largest city, exchanging gunfire with police Wednesday in an escalation of violence near Kosovo that threatens to flare into a new Balkan war. Southern Serbia, the other potential tinderbox, was edgy but without reported violence as Yugoslav troops moved into an area held by ethnic Albanian insurgents.

Carrying the allied air war to the innermost sanctuaries of the Yugoslav leadership, NATO warplanes have begun bombing a labyrinthine network of underground command bunkers with munitions designed to destroy the most well-protected targets. Almost two weeks after blasting one of President Slobodan Milosevic's Belgrade residences, NATO warplanes used a 5,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb this week to strike another of his regular retreats: the national command center at Mt.

With NATO's blessing, elite Yugoslav army troops moved today into a southern Serbia buffer zone overrun by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, as part of a plan to cap cross-border violence that threatens to expand into a new Balkan war. In columns of armored personnel carriers, hundreds of members of the 63rd Parachute Brigade fanned out in the southernmost tip of the zone around Kosovo that runs, at one end, into the Macedonian border.

The Yugoslav army battled Wednesday to claim some of the biggest military prizes in secessionist Croatia--the Adriatic port of Dubrovnik and the eastern strongholds of Vukovar and Vinkovci. As his troops fought the army and Serb insurgents, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman sought a new truce, offering to lift blockades of army facilities in his republic if the Yugoslav military held its fire.

While a cease-fire generally held across Croatia on Monday, the forces of the embattled breakaway republic were busy distributing a haul of tanks, armored personnel carriers and stocks of weapons abandoned here over the weekend by federal army troops. The federal soldiers departed hastily Sunday, forced by the terms of their withdrawal to change into civilian clothes on the lawn of their barracks, leaving their pants and boots soaking in a steady rain, before boarding buses for home.

As a schoolboy, Blagoje Adzic is said to have hidden and watched from a tree as Croatian fascists rampaged through his village and slaughtered every member of his family in 1941. The unspeakable horrors committed during one of Europe's bloodiest fratricides have haunted Adzic for half a century. Frequent public references to the loss of his family confirm that the emotional wounds have never healed.

The Yugoslav army is making ominous threats that it will force its way back into Kosovo if the United Nations doesn't soon deliver on a promise to let some Serbian soldiers and police return to the southern province. Angered by almost daily attacks on Serbs and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo, the Yugoslav military accuses the U.N. and NATO-led peacekeepers of violating the June peace accord that ended the war over Kosovo.

Ethnic violence spread to Croatia's Adriatic Sea coast Monday when more than 30,000 angry protesters stormed the main Yugoslav naval base at Split, killing a federal soldier and commandeering armored vehicles. Military commanders in Belgrade ordered troops on combat alert and issued a veiled warning to Croatian leaders that they would be held responsible for any further violence against the army.

From this hilltop village overlooking the grimy outskirts of Belgrade, a concrete latticework stretches across a wind-swept slope, marking out hundreds of new grave sites for the victims of Yugoslavia's undeclared war. Dozens of the freshly poured frames at Lesce Cemetery are already filled with the coffins of teen-age soldiers and mounded with dirt. A wood cross stands in for a headstone. Aluminum figures spell out the departed's name. Some of the crosses are marked "N. N."

Talks on a proposed cease-fire between Yugoslav forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas in southern Serbia's Presevo Valley broke off with no apparent progress Saturday. The difficulties delayed today's plans for Yugoslav troops to begin entering part of a buffer zone between Kosovo and Serbia proper adjacent to the Macedonian border, Yugoslav authorities said.

NATO agreed Thursday to allow Yugoslav troops to enter a buffer zone next to Kosovo and neighboring Macedonia that ethnic Albanian guerrillas have been using as a haven. The action, aimed at cutting off routes used by the guerrillas, marks a further warming of the alliance's ties with the Yugoslav government and another step in a growing confrontation between NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo and ethnic Albanian fighters near the borders of the separatist province.

Serbia's revenge of the nerds began with a call from a former paramilitary commander with a love of the Internet and an urgent need for recruits. Dragan Vasiljkovic had one crucial assignment left on Oct. 6, as the uprising against Slobodan Milosevic entered its last, critical phase: Seize the customs department from one of Milosevic's most powerful cronies, Mihalj Kertes. The silver-haired Vasiljkovic, 45, hadn't seen battle in years and hadn't slept for two days.

The Yugoslav army said Thursday that it had arrested two Britons and two Canadians carrying military equipment and explosives in Montenegro and suggested that the four were specialists in sabotage. It said a patrol arrested them Tuesday night along the Montenegrin boundary with Kosovo, adding that they may have been training police in Montenegro, whose pro-Western leaders oppose Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Armed Yugoslav troops seized control of the main airport in Montenegro on Wednesday, raising tensions between federal authorities of President Slobodan Milosevic and the independence-minded republic. The move took place one day before Montenegro planned to take over the strategic facility, which serves as both the republic's main commercial airport and a Yugoslav air force base.

Thousands of pro-democracy marchers came face to face with Serbia's dreaded Interior Ministry police Wednesday night, but backed down in time to avoid serious violence. An estimated 25,000 protesters, led by Democratic Party President Zoran Djindjic, were dispersed by hundreds of club-wielding riot police in central Belgrade as the crowd headed toward Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's home. The police were backed up by five vehicles mounted with water cannons. "Go back to Kosovo!"

A glassy-eyed federal soldier staggering over the worn marble paving stones of Mostar's famed Turkish Bridge reminded Becir Kurasepi of a thorn in independent Bosnia-Herzegovina's side. Mostar, a predominantly Muslim city of 100,000 that has been a favorite tourist destination for centuries, has been transformed into a federal army garrison town, and its cozy cafes are now venues for brawling.

Political turmoil consumed Yugoslavia on Friday when federal President Borisav Jovic resigned amid rumblings of civil war, and an ominous military statement raised fears of a coup d'etat. Prime Minister Ante Markovic was closeted with federal government ministers early today in an effort to stave off an explosion of ethnic hostilities that have been building among Yugoslavia's many nationalities.

Three U.N. employees who had been detained in Yugoslavia were released Wednesday, two days after their disappearance raised questions about whether Yugoslavia was violating the Kosovo peace agreement. Susan Manuel, a United Nations spokeswoman, said Andre Teles of Portugal, Gordon Cimiratic of Australia and Kosovo Serb Dejan Santic drove to a Danish army checkpoint Wednesday evening and were en route to their base in the Kosovo city of Kosovska Mitrovica. The U.N.

The Yugoslav army is making ominous threats that it will force its way back into Kosovo if the United Nations doesn't soon deliver on a promise to let some Serbian soldiers and police return to the southern province. Angered by almost daily attacks on Serbs and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo, the Yugoslav military accuses the U.N. and NATO-led peacekeepers of violating the June peace accord that ended the war over Kosovo.