BONN, Germany -- Forty-two Bosnian orphans arrived in Germany Tuesday exhausted by the five-day ordeal of their controversial evacuation from Sarajevo during which Serbian snipers killed two babies.
Medical officials who examined the small children on arrival at a former Soviet military air base in eastern Germany said several of the orphans were crying. Others were too weak to cry, the officials said, holding back their own tears.
Five of the babies were taken to a hospital to be treated for exhaustion and dehydration after they arrived aboard an Aeroflot plane at the base near the city of Magdeburg.
The youngest of the 42 children was 8 weeks old, the oldest 1 years, officials said.
The children were taken to orphanages near Magdeburg where they will stay until the fighting in Bosnia-Hercegovina is over.
A spokesman for the government of the eastern German state of Saxony- Anhalt, where the children are being given refuge, said the babies will not be placedfor adoption in Germany.
Several government and relief officials criticized the evacuation operation, saying it was ill-prepared and highly risky. Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said his ministry had advised the organizers against carrying out the mission. The evacuation was organized by two deputies of the Saxony-Anhalt parliament, Karsten Knolle and Juergen Angelbeck. The two rejected criticism of the mission, saying that the children would have probably died if they had stayed in Sarajevo.
Two babies were killed when Serbian snipers fired at the bus as shortly after it left from Sarajevo Saturday to nearby Fonjica to meet the German officials.
As the 42 orphans arrived in Germany, people attending the funeral in Sarajevo of the two babies killed on the bus had to run for cover as shells impacted at the cemetery.
Knolle said that Serbian officials picked nine children from the bus before it arrived in the Croatian city of Split, where the children boarded a plane for Germany. He said the officials guaranteed they would ensure the children were looked after.
Meanwhile, a road convoy left the eastern German city of Weimar for Croatia Tuesday, to collect 10 wounded children who are among the refugees from the besieged Bosnian city of Slavonski Brod.
German government officials have urged other European countries to step up aid for the refugees, pointing out that Germany was already giving shelter to 205,000 people who fled the fighting in former Yugoslavia.
