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Muslims Stone Catholic Monastery in Mostar
MOSTAR, Bosnia, June 17 (Reuters) - Croatian media said Muslims stoned a Croat Catholic monastery in Mostar on Monday, two weeks before elections to help reunify the ethnically polarised Bosnian city. A spokesman for police in the European Union administration which took charge of postwar Mostar in 1994 confirmed a stoning incident before dawn but said the incident was not serious.
The official Croatian news agency HINA said a group of Muslims stoned the Franciscan monastery on the central Bulevar street that marked the former wartime front line. HINA said the attack caused considerable damage to the building.
It quoted a report by local police in Croat-controlled west Mostar as saying the Muslim mob shouted, "Allahu akhbar (God is great)," "This is Islam" and "Ustasha get out." Ustasha is a derogatory word for Croats, taken from Croatia's Nazi puppet Ustasha regime of World War Two.
West Mostar police said they understood that six Muslims involved in the attack had been arrested by Muslim, or Bosnian government, police in east Mostar.
The stoning was the latest in an intermittent string of communal incidents in Mostar, underscoring Croat-Muslim enmity that is unlikely to fade with the holding of elections for a joint city government scheduled for June 30. Analysts are closely watching the vote will is regarded as a dry run for countrywide elections to be held in September. The 1995 Dayton peace treaty stipulates the national poll as a way of reintegrating the ethnically partitioned land.
Separatist Serbs control half of Bosnia. Croats and Muslims are nominally allied in a federation but in reality remain divided into ethnic enclaves where minorities are unwelcome. Nationalist Croats reaffirmed their quest for a separate state over the weekend by appointing a new government for their "Croat Republic of Herceg-Bosna," covering west Mostar and its Herzegovina hinterland in southwest Bosnia. |
Berserkistan, June 12 · Mostar Administrator Gives Approval to September Vote
Berserkistan, May 30 · EU Administrator Sets Mostar Elections for June 30
Berserkistan, May 25 · Final Agreement Reached on Mostar Elections
Berserkistan, May 23 · Mediators Head Off Muslim Boycott of Mostar Elections
Berserkistan, May 22 · Mostar Elections Focus of Casado-Izetbegovic Meet
Berserkistan, May 1 · Mostar to Hold Elections May 31
Mostar, A Tale of Two Cities by Berserkistan's Jim Bartlett
For Peace in Mostar, Follow the Money Trail to Croatia
New Administrator Begins Tough Task of Making Mostar Functional
Mostar: Before and After its Devastation A site by Dubravko Kakarigi
Benvenuti in Guerra Gavino Paddeu chronicles Mostar's fall
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