Yugoslav army artillery pounded rebel targets in central Kosovo yesterday on the third day of a major offensive, while Albanian families fled from villages in the path of the advance.
The distant rumble of heavy shelling vibrated through the air as two tractor-drawn carts with about 40 exhausted refugees arrived in the village of Bujance, 20 km south-west of the provincial capital, Pristina.
They said they had fled from the villages of Zborc and Carabreg, on the edge of a battle zone where army tanks were filmed in action on Saturday.
Over 300 refugees have collected in Bujance since the offensive began, according to a local representative of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the main ethnic Albanian party in the Serbian province.
"Three children came in with injuries from shrapnel, in the legs and chest, and they've already been taken to hospital in Pristina," the man said.
The Serb Media Centre in Pristina said Serbian forces were gradually pushing backed Albanian fighters in a counter-offensive from Komorane toward Lapusnik but they were putting up stiff resistance in some places.
Two Serbian policemen were killed and two seriously wounded while 11 KLA guerrillas were killed in weekend clashes near Crnoljevo, in the Stimlje area, the Media Centre said.
The ethnic Albanians' Kosovo Information Centre (KIC) said parts of several villages were burning from Serbian bombardment and troops were setting ablaze houses in one community that had escaped the shelling unscathed.
At least five Albanians had been killed and 24 wounded in the weekend fighting, the KIC said. The army operation, launched on Friday, appeared to have the aim of reopening Kosovo's main east-west highway, from Pristina to the second largest regional town, Pec. The road has been cut by the KLA for months.
The guerrillas, who control large areas of rural Kosovo, are fighting for independence for the ethnic Albanians who make up 90 percent of the 1.8 million population.