Four Nato Soldiers Are Killed; Sniper Grazes American In Bosnia Former Foes Claim That All Pows Have Been Released

Bosnia’s former battlefield foes claimed Sunday they had emptied their jails of all POWs, in a day marred by the deaths of four soldiers in the NATO-led force and the wounding of a U.S. Army officer by sniper fire.

Three British soldiers were killed when their vehicle hit a mine near Mrkonjic Grad in the northwest. A Swedish soldier died when an armored personnel carrier skidded off a road in the north.

In Ilidza, a Serb-held suburb west of Sarajevo, Lt. Shawn H. Watts was grazed on the neck by a sniper’s bullet. The 28-year-old from Greenwood, Miss., returned to duty several hours later.

NATO said it was investigating, but Bosnian Serb army officials in Ilidza said they knew nothing of the shooting.

It was the biggest death toll of any single day of the NATO-led mission since it began Dec. 20. Before Sunday, there were 35 injured and four dead, including a British soldier who killed himself.

Meanwhile, with hundreds of war prisoners released Saturday, it appeared that most of those in captivity before the weekend had been set free.

Croats and Muslims freed about 380 prisoners on Saturday at the Sarajevo airport, a neutral site commonly used for such releases. On Sunday, 74 were confirmed released by the Serbs and eight by the Bosnian government.

A Bosnian Serb spokesman said the release of another 74 outside of Sarajevo accounted for all Serb-held POWs, but the Red Cross could not immediately confirm that.

“There are still people on the (Red Cross) list of 900 who have not been released yet,” said Red Cross official Pierre Krahenbuhl in Banja Luka, a Serb-held city in the north.

Red Cross spokesman Pierre Gauthier said the Bosnian Croats fulfilled their POW release obligations on Saturday. However, they still hold about 50 prisoners who are being investigated for possible war crimes.

Gauthier said the Croats had the right to keep them “for a reasonable time.”

Red Cross officials complained that in addition to the POW releases, there have been swaps that could amount to “ethnic cleansing.”

They were investigating an unsupervised government-Serb exchange of at least 350 civilians Saturday in Sanski Most to see whether they had been expelled or had left of their own will.

The Red Cross also complained the government was believed to hold many people at a military prison in Tuzla, and its delegates had not been allowed to visit them.

Some of the POWs released over the weekend spoke of severe maltreatment by their captors.

Thousands of people from Srebrenica remain missing, many of them believed executed and buried in mass graves.