Refugees Tell of Serb Atrocities in Fall of ‘Safe Area’ : Bosnia: Women are reportedly dragged off, raped during ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Srebrenica. Displacement of thousands of Muslims is called a humanitarian disaster.

In one of the largest cases of “ethnic cleansing” in the 39-month Bosnian war, more than 14,000 Muslim refugees reached government-held territory Thursday with tales of horror, while thousands more--mostly men--were missing.

The famished, weary refugees found themselves amid renewed despair as they camped along the roadside with no sanitation, little food and less hope, in what officials described as a humanitarian disaster.

Frightening yet familiar stories of rape and murder began to emerge from the refugees a day after they were rounded up and deported by their Bosnian Serb conquerors who swept through a U.N.-protected enclave, now lost to war and the world’s inertia.

The fall of the Srebrenica enclave, one of six “safe areas” established by the United Nations to protect civilians from Bosnia-Herzegovina’s brutal ethnic warfare, represents a major defeat for the world body and the international community and is likely to put the crippled, humiliated U.N. peacekeeping mission here out of its misery.

“I think the U.N. effort in Bosnia, at least in the context of [the U.N. Protection Force], is finished,” Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey said.

By Thursday night, only about 400 refugees remained at the site of a Dutch U.N. peacekeeping camp in Potocari, three miles north of Srebrenica, U.N. officials said. The expulsion of between 25,000 and 40,000 Muslims was complete, Bosnian Serb leaders said.

Women, children and the elderly were herded at gunpoint onto buses and trucks, while able-bodied men and boys--some as young as 10--were separated for interrogation. Hundreds were taken to a soccer stadium in the Bosnian Serb-held town of Bratunac, relief workers said, but many more remained unaccounted for.

Several refugees said that as the buses were being loaded, Muslim men were taken away and shots were heard.

As the displaced of Srebrenica arrived in the government-held town of Tuzla--itself already teeming with refugees--they recounted moments from their harrowing ordeal. One woman told U.N. relief workers that she watched in horror as Bosnian Serb soldiers grabbed and carted away her two nieces. Several refugees told reporters in Tuzla that a number of young women were removed from buses and taken off to be raped. Some of the women returned, others did not.

There was one report of nationalist Serb soldiers taking an 8-month-old baby from its mother’s arms, then dragging the woman away as she screamed.

Sedalija Selimovic, evidently spared because he looks 20 years older than his stated 44 years, told the Associated Press that the Serbs seized boys for questioning. On the first night of the Serb occupation of Potocari, Selimovic said, “all night, I was hearing women screaming.”

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The reports could not be independently verified. The Bosnian Serbs refused to allow U.N. peacekeepers or other international monitors to supervise the bus loading or to accompany the convoys through their entire journey.

“Ethnic cleansing,” the forced ejection of civilians from areas taken by combatants and one of the cruelest elements of the warfare in the Balkans, has been committed by all sides. Croatian government forces, for example, drove many Serbs from their homes in May after recapturing Serb-held territory in central Croatia.

But Serb nationalists have been blamed for the vast majority of forced expulsions, rapes and other atrocities.

After the fall of Srebrenica, U.N. spokesman Alexander Ivanko said, thousands of men were taken away to unknown destinations.

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While many of these captives--and especially able-bodied soldiers--may have fled into the forested hills, many of the remaining male refugees were to be interrogated as possible “terrorists,” the Bosnian Serbs said.

In Tuzla, the refugees crowded near a military air base, part of which is mined, and camped roadside in sweltering heat. Relief workers were able to distribute a small amount of water and U.N. military rations, but it was meager succor to people who in many cases had not eaten for days.

The Bosnian government said it is holding the United Nations responsible for the fate of the Srebrenica refugees.

The Bosnian Serb version of events was quite different. Bosnian Serb television showed brief pictures of seemingly friendly soldiers supervising an apparently orderly evacuation. Soldiers were shown giving candy bars to young girls.

Gen. Ratko Mladic, the triumphant commander of the Bosnian Serb army, visited Srebrenica and declared it his. “All the former Srebrenica enclave is now under Serb control,” he said during a tour of the deserted town.

Coverage of his tour purported to show a Bosnian Serb refugee, supposedly driven from her home by Muslims years earlier, returning to reclaim her house. Mladic was shown shaking her hand and helping inspect her property.

Bosnian Serb television also interviewed a man identified as an Orthodox priest, rejoicing that the departure of the Muslims would allow him to recover Srebrenica’s Orthodox church. Mladic said “Islamic fundamentalists” had used the church as a barn for cows and sheep.

“This church proves what Islamic fundamentalists want to make here, what they’re doing in this war,” the man identified as a priest said. “But we will rebuild this church. The life of this church, the life of all the believers here will start again. All the Serb refugees will return.”

The Bosnian Serbs, to justify their battle for secession from Bosnia, routinely portray the Muslim-led but secular government of Bosnia as “Islamic fundamentalists.”

With Srebrenica lost, Bosnian government officials sounded the alarm again Thursday about the fate of the two remaining, U.N.-designated safe areas in the east: Gorazde and the more vulnerable Zepa.

“Zepa is exposed to constant attacks from tanks, artillery and infantry,” Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic said, demanding that additional U.N. troops be dispatched immediately to protect the enclave, home to 16,000 people.

U.N. officials have not confirmed the government reports but again Thursday conceded that little can be done to save Zepa.