Heavy fighting in Serbia's Kosovo province sent hundreds of people fleeing into Albania yesterday amid reports of more than a dozen deaths. The bloodshed appears to be the worst since early March when Serbian police killed over 80 people in a crackdown on militants and their families.
A day after Serb authorities claimed to have killed several dozen militants in four villages in the Decani region of western Kosovo, ethnic Albanian officials said 37 Albanians had been killed during the weekend.
Serbian police executed six ethnic Albanians in a village in central Kosovo, the separatist Kosovo Democratic League (LDK) said yesterday. An LDK communique issued in the Kosovan capital Pristina said the six men were "forced out of their homes by the police, lined up and shot" in the village of Poklek on Sunday. The other villagers were forced to flee as the police set fire to about 20 houses, added the LDK, the main ethnic Albanian party in the predominantly Albanian Serbian province.
The latest fierce fighting prompted about 1,000 Kosovo Albanians, mostly women, children and elderly, to cross into Albania's Troboja region.
Serbian police and Albanian separatists are fighting what is virtually a secret war in central and south-west Kosovo which they have sealed off from the eyes of the outside world.
None of this fighting can be seen on the ground although, like Bosnia's 1992-95 war, it would be clearly visible to western spy satellites and airborne surveillance.
Reporters who tried to enter the battle zone were turned back either by Serbian police, whose road-blocks command the perimeter, or members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which is fighting for independence.
The secrecy seemed to suit both sides, trading accusations of responsibility while bidding for the attention of western peacemakers, who are fearful that the conflict may grow into a war threatening Albania proper and Macedonia.
An adviser to the Kosovo Albanian leader, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, hinted after they met President Clinton on Friday that the Albanians might resume their boycott of talks with the Serbian government if police do not pull out.