Croats Block Joint Investigation Of Bomb Refuse To Work With Muslims In Explosion That Injured 50

Croat officials in Mostar have blocked a joint Muslim-Croat investigation of a car bomb in west Mostar, Bosnia’s federal Interior Ministry said Saturday.

The minister for internal affairs in the Mostar region, ethnic Croat Valentin Coric, refused to cooperate with his Muslim colleagues and is conducting his own investigation together with the police from neighboring Croatia, the ministry said in a statement.

Extremists opposed to ethnic reconciliation in Bosnia are suspected of carrying out a car bomb attack Thursday night that injured 50 people, half of them seriously, and damaged scores of buildings and vehicles in Croat-controlled west Mostar. It was the worst attack since a 1995 peace agreement ended Bosnia’s civil war.

Mostar, 50 miles southwest of Sarajevo and one of Bosnia’s most war-ravaged cities, is divided into the Croat-controlled west and Muslim-controlled east.

Bosnian Muslim officials claimed the attack was aimed at the joint Muslim-Croat police, only recently established, and the idea of the two ethnic groups working together.

In an interview with Bosnian state television on Saturday, Haris Silajdzic, the Muslim co-chairman of the Bosnian government, blamed Croatian organized criminals in west Mostar for the blast.

Vladimir Soljic, a Bosnian Croat who is president of the Muslim-Croat federation, claimed the attack was aimed against the Croat population of western Mostar and Croats in Bosnia in general.