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Croatia strikes to seize

back rebel Serb soil

ZAGREB: Croatia unleashed an artillery and infantry offensive on Friday to seize back territory held for four years by rebel Serbs and made quick gains according to UN officers.

First reports said the Croatian army struck at 5 a.m. (0300GMT), shelling the main Serb towns in the UN protected Knin Krajina, a horseshoe of mountain terrain stretching from south of Zagreb almost to the Adriatic.

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman broadcast an appeal to the Serbs to surrender as his army, brushing aside a Security Council appeal for restraint, pummelled the Serbs across UN truce lines.

"Croatian forces launched an all-out attack on sector south (the Knin area), including heavy shelling of all major towns including Knin itself," UN Colonel Andrew Leslie said. "We lost count after 300 rounds."

The offensive dismayed the United Nations, desperately trying to contain conflicts in both Croatia and neighbouring Bosnia.

"It is a bit difficult to understand," Yasushi Akashi, the UN special envoy for former Yugoslavia, told reporters in Zagreb.

Croatia has vowed to recover all the land it lost to its Serb minority who grabbed a third of the country after it declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

Serb leaders and UN peacekeepers have feared the latest offensive since the Croatian Army, in a muscular display of firepower, seized back the Western Slavonia enclave from the Serbs in just 36 hours in May.

The Croation army prepared for the offensive by building its strength to about 100,000 men.

Tudjman said the army was forced to attack after the failure of talks between the two sides in Geneva on Thursday when an offer by Krajina "prime minister" Milan Babic to discuss reintegration apparently did not go far enough.

Serbian-led Yugoslavia signalled this week that the Krajina Serbs should not expect to be bailed out by Belgrade.

The Krajina region, whose eastern flank borders Bosnia, is divided by the UN into Sectors North and South.

Sector South, containing the Serb mountain citadel of Knin is surrounded on three sides by the Croatian Army and its Bosnian Croat allies who routed Bosnian Serbs in battles for strategic towns last week.

Sector North reaches to within 35 km (22 miles) of Zagreb and was used by the Serb to launch lethal rockets attacks on the Croatian capital in May.

The immediate Croatian stratgey in the north appeared to be to neutralise the threat of attacks on Zagreb's civilian population. The city was untouched on Friday morning and its airport opened normally.-Reuter