Hundreds Of Trapped Serbs Surrender To Croats Opposing Forces Move Into U.N. Buffer Zones, Threatening To Reignite All-Out War

Hundreds of Serb rebels fought Thursday to escape being trapped by the Croatian army, then raised white flags and laid down arms in their biggest surrender of the Croatian war.

The surrender followed an intense firefight in which both sides used tanks, mortars and rockets.

Tensions also soared on frontlines in the east and south of Croatia as opposing forces moved into U.N. buffer zones, threatening to reignite all-out war after three years of an uneasy peace monitored by U.N. peacekeeping troops.

Jittery residents of the capital, Zagreb, rushed for shelters when air raid sirens wailed just before noon. But there was no repeat of the rocket attacks that killed six people and wounded 185 the previous two days.

Just 15 miles north of a portion of the Zagreb-Belgrade highway that the Croats seized from the Serbs in a surprise offensive beginning Monday, Pakrac became a trap for fleeing Serb troops.

Some Serbs fleeing the Croatian offensive escaped into adjacent Serb-held northern Bosnia. But Serbs further north, around Pakrac, found their way south cut off by the Croat capture of the highway.

The cease-fire negotiated Wednesday by the United Nations said Serbs who wished to flee south into Serb-held northern Bosnia could exit through Pakrac, 55 miles southeast of Zagreb, and travel south from there.

But U.N. spokeswoman Susan Manuel said the Croats did not want U.N. troops on the corridor leading south to Bosnia.

A joint defense council of rebel Serb leaders from Croatia and Bosnia demanded that the United Nations ensure the “liberation” of thousands of civilians and soldiers surrounded in Pakrac. Otherwise, they said, they would use “all available means” to take back territory lost to the army offensive.