The United Nations is "increasingly concerned" about the fate of hundreds of thousands of displaced Kosovar Albanians inside the province, a UN official said yesterday.
Since the start of the NATO air campaign on March 24, the number of people displaced within the Serbian province is estimated at 700,000, the UN deputy emergency relief co-ordinator, Mr Martin Griffith, told the Security Council.
He said the UN high commissioner for human rights had received reports from refugees indicating "mass executions of ethnic Albanians" in four areas - Djakovica, Orahovac, Ljubenic, Kotlina.
The testimonies relate "individual arbitrary killings, the use of civilians as human shields, reported rapes, torture and other degrading treatment of civilians," he said.
Civilians have also been at the receiving end of the air strikes, Mr Griffith added, citing NATO's bombing of two refugee convoys that killed 75 people last week.
"It has become evident that we are witnessing crimes against humanity," he said. "Before our eyes, we are seeing the systematic, forcible emptying of Kosovo of its remaining ethnic Albanian population." --(AFP)
Thousands of Kosovo Albanian refugees sheltering in the Berisha mountains have come under heavy artillery fire from Serbian forces, according to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
"There is no escape for anyone from this area," Mr Sokol Bashota, a member of the KLA general headquarters there, said in a telephone interview. "They are coming at us from three directions and there are Serb forces in place to the south in the Klecka area. We are trapped here and we need NATO's help." Mr Bashota's remarks could not be independently verified. But Western diplomats, citing telephoned accounts, also spoke of shelling in the area killing scores of people.
International monitors said the KLA wanted NATO to hit Serbian guns in Kosovo and drop food to the refugees facing starvation and epidemics. --(Reuters)
The KLA said yesterday it had captured three members of the Yugoslav army, including a Russian volunteer. --(AFP)