Italian Relief Plane Crashes in Bosnia; U.N. Suspends Flights

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  An Italian transport plane crashed Thursday while carrying blankets and other emergency goods to besieged Sarajevo, and a U.N. official said there was no sign that the four crew members survived.

U.N. officials suspended humanitarian flights to the city pending an investigation of the crash. But Fernando del Mundo, a U.N. spokesman in Geneva, said there was no indication that the plane had been hit by gunfire.

Four U.S. Marine rescue helicopters searching for the wreckage were driven away from the area by what their crews believe was small-arms fire, according to Pentagon spokesmen and naval officers reached by phone in the Adriatic Sea.

There was no indication of who fired at the helicopters, which were dispatched from the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima in the Adriatic.

The Marine helicopters--transport craft and two Cobra gunship escorts--did not open fire, and no aircraft damage was reported, Navy spokesmen said, but the incident was the U.S. military’s closest brush with hostile fire in the region since Bosnia’s three-sided civil war broke out five months ago.

The crash of the Italian plane and apparent loss of its four crewmen dampened spirits raised earlier in the day by the arrival of the top U.N. peacekeeping official to discuss the latest agreement on curbing ethnic fighting around Sarajevo.

The official, Marrack Goulding, U.N. undersecretary general for peacekeeping, expressed his own discouragement over the halting moves toward a peaceful settlement. He said there were no signs that Serbian fighters were turning heavy weapons over to U.N. supervision as their leader had promised Wednesday.

Serbian militias have ignored similar agreements in the past.

U.N. officials said they will warn both sides to stop fighting and continue a process of lessening hostilities that began last week at peace talks in London.

Bosnia-Herzegovina was relatively calm Thursday, but Serbian and Muslim forces were reported fighting west of the capital.

The twin-engine Italian air force turboprop went down on a flight to Bosnia’s capital from Split, a Croatian port that is serving as the base for the U.N.-organized mercy flights. U.N. officials said there was no sign of life at the crash scene.

Weather conditions were reported to be good when the plane went down.

It was the first crash involving the airlift, although other planes have been shot at.

Del Mundo said the wreckage was found by a U.S. helicopter near the town of Jesenic, 20 miles west of Sarajevo, about six hours after contact with the aircraft was lost.