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US denounces attacks on civilians

Croatia declares offensive against Serb rebels
ZAGREB. May 3: Croatia declared its offensive against Serb rebels over Tuesday after its forces captured a strategic town and bombed a bridge linking Serbs to their allies. Hours earlier. Serb rockets slammed Into the Croatian capital, killing five people downtown and wounding 121. reports AP.
One of the rocket-propelled cluster bombs landed in a schoolyard. Two girls and a teacher were seriously Injured, including a 12 year old who had shrapnel in her spine. All schools were closed.
The bridge is the last remaining link between CroaUan and Bosnian Serb territory.
The government army sent panicked Serb troops and civilians fleeing toward Serb-held parts of Bosnia after entering the town of Okucani southeast of Zagreb.
In a surprise offensive Monday, government soldiers retook some of the one-third of Croatia that rebel Serbs captured in the 1991 civil war that followed the country's secession from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.
The fighting was the fiercest in Croatia since a truce took effect in January 1992. and it threatened to merge with the war in Bosnia, where ethnic Serbs have captured 70 per cent of the republic. That danger was underscored Monday when Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic threatened to send help to Serbs in CroaUa.
Escalated violence in the Balkans was predicted following the official expiration Monday of a four-month truce In Bosnia and Croatia's demands to scale back the U.N peacekeeping mission .there.
The main thrust of the
Croat government offensive was to wrest control of a section of the highway running east from Zagreb to Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital. President Franjo Tudjmans office pronounced the offensive ended Tuesday afternoon, shortly after the capture of Okucani. 110 kilometers ( 65 miles) southeast of Zagreb, a Serb stronghold on the highway.
" Croatian Serb forces stopped giving organized resistance. the statement said. Following negotiations with their commander, some 600 rebel Serb soldiers surrounded at nearby Pakarac surrendered. U.N and Croatian officials said.
Tudjman's office statement did not say the stretch of road had been retaken. But the Transport Ministry said the highway would reopen Wednesday, indicating that the
area was under Croatian control.
Croatian authorities said Zagreb and its outskirts were hit earlier Tuesday by 11 rocket-propelled cluster bombs fired by Serb forces located close to the city's southern outskirts. Six rockets hit downtown streets filled with shoppers and a park.
Meanwhile, the United States urged Croatia on Tuesday restore U.N authority In a Serb-controlled area of the country and launched a joint diplomatic effort with Russia to lower tensions in the former Yugoslav republic. «
The State Department also accused Krajina Serbs of firing missiles with cluster bombs at civilians in Zagreb, the capital. " It is contrary to everything that's decent." spokesman Nicholas Burns said. "So therefore we condemn that kind of attack."