Nato Troops Defend Soldier Under Attack Response Is First Gunfire Of Peacekeeping Mission

NATO troops defending a wounded comrade opened fire in a Serb-held suburb of Sarajevo, trading the first hostile gunfire of their fledgling mission to keep Bosnia’s peace.

“It was a quick and positive response,” NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Rayner said Friday. “They were the first shots fired by IFOR.” IFOR is the acronym for the NATO-led Implementation Force.

An Italian military engineer, Cpl. Elio Sbordoni, was wounded in the arm by an unknown attacker who fired on a hotel complex Thursday in Serb-held Vogosca, just north of Sarajevo. The complex is to be the main headquarters of Italy’s 2,500 soldiers in Bosnia. The first units arrived just days ago.

Sbordoni took cover under a vehicle from the high-caliber rifle rounds, and Italian soldiers returned fire to defend him.

That violence - and the shootings of two Muslim policemen in the Croat side of the divided city of Mostar on Friday - made clear that not everyone is ready to stop fighting.

An American soldier heading to Hungary as part of the peacekeeping mission was critically injured Friday when he touched an electrical line at a train stop in the Czech Republic, according to U.S. military officials.

The U.S. Army private, whose name, hometown and unit were not released, was flown by helicopter to a U.S. military hospital in Germany for treatment.