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Aid Convoy Falls Victim in Croatia

Aid Convoy Falls Victim in Croatia
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October 20, 1991, Section 1, Page 3Buy Reprints
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Heavy clashes were reported today throughout Croatia's eastern panhandle region, despite a new cease-fire that was supposed to have taken effect at midday.

Two nurses from a French medical team were seriously hurt when their truck ran over a mine as they were transporting scores of wounded soldiers and civilians from a besieged eastern Croatian town, Vukovar.

Heavy shellfire had forced the 12-vehicle medical-aid convoy, belonging to the French relief organization Doctors Without Borders, to detour from its original route out of Vukovar. Then the truck struck the mine, officials of the organization said. Proliferation of Militias

Reports did not specify who fired the shells. Numerous irregular and ill-disciplined armed militias are active on both the Serbian and Croatian sides in the area around Vukovar, an important Croatian town on the Danube River that has been bombarded daily by Serbian forces for two months.

Safe passage for the convoy was to have been assured by a local truce drawn up in conjunction with a cease-fire agreement reached between Serbian and Croatian officials in The Hague on Friday. Croatian forces today allowed a column of about 130 Yugoslav army vehicles to leave a besieged barracks in Zagreb as part of Friday's accord.

The fighting that has flared in Croatia since that republic and Slovenia declared independence in June has taken hundreds of lives. Croatian independence noves brought fierce resistance from Serbia, which dominates the Yugoslav central Government and army.

Today's hostilities in the Croatian panhandle apparently involved Croatian forces battling against Serbian irregulars and pro-Serbian Yugoslav Army units.

Croatia's President, Franjo Tudjman, and Yugoslavia's Defense Minister, Gen. Veljko Kadijevic, ordered a new cease-fire to take effect at noon today. Local news reports, however, spoke of continuing violence near the town of Osijek, which has been shelled by Serbian forces for months; as well as Novska, Jasenovac and Nova Gradiska. All these towns are in areas coveted by the Serbs.

Dubrovnik, the Adriatic resort, which has been without electricity and water for some time, also reportedly came under mortar fire today.

Croatian firefighters in the town of Sisak succeeded in extinguishing a huge blaze in an oil refinery, which was knocked out by Yugoslav fighter jets on Friday. Refinery officials estimated the damage at $20 million.

Today's shelling of the area around the Vukovar hospital is the latest in a long list of attacks that have jeopardized the lives of foreign medical personnel, cease-fire observers and journalists in the Yugoslav civil war. This has been exacerbated by the fact that the fighting among republic and ethnic armies have sliced Croatia into parts. U.N. Mediator Is Gloomy

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 19 (Special to The New York Times) -- A United Nations arms embargo against Yugoslavia is not working and arms are pouring into the country, helping to further ignite the civil war, former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, the United Nations mediator in the conflict, said today.

Mr. Vance said he is examining the possibility of a new Security Council oil embargo against Yugoslavia as a way of slowing hostilities.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 1, Page 3 of the National edition with the headline: Aid Convoy Falls Victim in Croatia. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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