A STRING of Croatia's Adriatic ports and islands are at saturation point from refugees displaced by the fighting in Bosnia.
'We've simply run out of room for these poor people,' said Ivo Raunig, a lifeguard and water polo coach in the breezy industrial port of Split, whose time is increasingly spent caring for the tens of thousands of Muslims and Croats from Bosnia streaming into Croatia to escape the civil war.
Split's ability to cope with the influx is now being severely strained. The city was already a haven for 15,000 refugees from the Croatian war well before the intercommunal bloodletting began in Bosnia. That brought 30,000 more people flooding into Split where they are filling hotels and guesthouses and and up to 1,000 are sleeping on gym mats at the plush sports centre. They have raised the city's population by almost a quarter.
Further down the Dalmatian coast the effects of the migration are even more dramatic, with the pretty resort of Markaska doubling in size following the arrival of 30,000 Bosnians, who have been put up in the town's sprawling complex of hotels.
With other coastal towns also under strain and the exodus from Bosnia showing no sign of stopping, aid officials have had no option but to ferry thousands of refugees to Rijeka from where they are transferred to reception camps elsewhere in the republic.
Hans Staudinger, Split representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said the local authorities were getting tougher in their approach to the refugee problem, recently closing one of the city's transit centres.
'With the war in Croatia and Bosnia, this stretch of coastline has taken nearly 200,000 refugees', he said. 'Almost every day there's a new convoy of people - we're running very short of extra capacity to accommodate them.'
Most appear determined to go home one day. 'Bosnian forces will drive out the Chetniks (Serb irregulars) and we will go back to our villages,' said Dubravka Jurisic, a middle-aged Croatian woman from Bogojno. 'We can never live with the Serbs again - there's only a small number who are not involved in this war.'
Mohammed Corbo, a 14-year-old Muslim boy, was moved out of Sarajevo along with thousands of other children after spending weeks in a basement shelter. 'We only had one hour a day of electricity and water,' he said. 'The Chetnik bandits shelled our block of flats. When it was quiet you couldn't go out because of the snipers.'
Mohammed lived in an ethnically mixed area and had always regarded Serbs as his friends. 'Before the war nationality was never an issue now the Serbs are killing us because we are Muslims.'
Ante Lozancic, a Croat, is old enough at 72 to remember the ethnic savagery in Bosnia during the second world war. 'This war is just as bloody as the last one,' he said. 'I don't think the Serbs are avenging the slaughter of their people, they just want territory.'
Local Croats are very sympathetic towards the plight of their neighbours in Bosnia, since they, too, have been the victims of Serbian attack. Restaurants provide food for the refugees and appeals by the city's radio station always result in a flurry of donations.
'Donations are generous and hospitable - we give these people everything we have,' said Mr Raunig, the lifeguard. 'We have at least some idea of what they are going through because our coastline is still being shelled by the bloody army.
'But they've really been through hell - you can see it on their faces. Children have lost their parents, wives have lost their husbands, whole families have been separated.'
Like many Split residents, he says he is mentally exhausted by the refugee crisis coupled with the strain of the continued military threat along the coast Dubrovnik was under attack again yesterday. However, people generally feel that their prospects can only improve. Around the bars and cafes close to Split's harbour an air of optimism is even detectable.
'I think we're over the worst,' said Slobodan Doric, a local travel agent. 'There are even indications that tourists are coming back.'
- Serbia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, maintained in a Channel 4 interview yesterday that he was prepared to resign 'if it is a price for lifting of sanctions, a just solution,' to the crisis in Yugoslavia.
In the besieged Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, meanwhile, Serb irregulars killed a doctor and wounded six medical workers when they strafed a hospital bus with machine gun fire.