Horror stories fuel Yugoslav strife // Propaganda war keeps hatred at battle pitch

SISAK, Yugoslavia Tales of massacres and mutiliation are emergingin Croatia's bloody ethnic conflict, feeding growing fury betweenSerbs and Croats and diminishing the chances for peace.

Stories of gruesome bloodletting have become central ingredientsof an unrelenting propaganda war. Details are often difficult tosubstantiate, but their existence has stirred deep emotions.

Croatian newspapers have reported - and Western journalistsconfirmed - that a human shield of Croatian villagers was forced tomarch ahead of ethnic Serbian militiamen as they fired their guns atCroatian forces late last week.

Croatian police in the village of Struga apparently did notshoot back, fearing they would hit the women, children and elderlyshielding the Serbs, reports said.

Serbian newspapers also run horror tales or reports designed toblacken Croatian authorities and police forces.

A recent newspaper headline said that 400 "Ustashas" had beenkilled during fighting. Ustashas were Croatian fascist extremistswho set up a Nazi puppet state in Yugoslavia.

Much of the Serbian media refer to the Croatian government andits security forces as "Ustasha" and tend to inflate the number ofCroatians killed in battles.

More than 50 people have been killed in Croatia since last week,mainly in clashes between Croatian forces and ethnic Serbs, whooppose the republic's secession and seek to join neighboring Serbia.Croatia and the neighboring republic Slovenia declared independenceJune 25.

European Community officials arrived Wednesday seeking a trucein Croatia, and the eight-member presidency tried again to reach anaccord in the republic. But heightened violence and greaterinvolvement by Serb-led federal troops have fed fears of all-outcivil war.

A cease-fire declaration last Friday was followed by thebloodiest weekend since June 25, with death toll estimates rangingfrom 30 to 180. Serbian nationalists, supported by Serbia, haveseized control of seven Croatian villages in the republic and havenot shown willingness to end the fighting in which they have theupper hand.

The Croatian government on Tuesday played a tape of crying womenfrom Struga and other villages south of the capital, Zagreb.

"The (Serbian) terrorists destroyed everything and killed atrandom," said a Croatian women.

"They were shooting and burning houses, killing people andcattle," another woman said on the tape, played at a pressconference.

People interviewed by a Croatian reporter also spoke of rapesand killings with knives and bayonets by Serbs. They claimed theSerbs mutilated dead bodies and carved out eyes.

The tape, first carried by Croatian radio, did not give names ofthose interviewed.

Struga is a village with a Serbian minority, about 60 milessouth of Zagreb. Dozens of Croatians have fled from the town in thelast three days.

In nearby Sisak, Mate Piskor, a reporter for the leadingCroatian daily, Vjesnik, said ethnic Serbian forces were only threemiles from the city.

An estimated 1,000 civilians and Croat guardsmen were fleeing toSisak from the town of Kostajnica in a 3 1/2-mile convoy Wednesdaynight. Kostajnica was reportedly bombed Tuesday by the Yugoslav AirForce.