U.S. Troops Surround Police Station, Forced to Retreat

BRCKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Heavily-armed U.S. troops from the NATO-led peacekeeping force surrounded a police station in the Bosnian Serb town of Brcko early today but were forced to retreat when hundreds of townspeople pelted them with rocks.

The angry crowd, roused from sleep by air raid sirens, menaced the troops with pieces of wood and threw rocks at armored vehicles, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.

The U.S. troops arrived in the town--loyal to hard-line Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic--apparently to force the hard-liners out of the main police station, witnesses said.

The troops took up positions around the station, which is near a bridge at a border crossing with Croatia, and behind trees in a small park across the street, according to the witnesses. But an hour later an air raid siren began sounding and hundreds of people poured into the streets.

Elderly women at the front of the crowd battered the gun turrets of the troops’ armored vehicles while other people threw stones, forcing the Americans to retreat from positions in front of the police station and drive back across the bridge into Croatia.

The operation was similar to one last week in which mostly British NATO troops helped loyalists of Western-backed Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic take control of police stations in her northwest stronghold of Banja Luka. On that occasion, the hard-line police commanders laid down their weapons after a short standoff.