Widespread violence erupted across Kosovo yesterday, with Serb forces shelling ethnic Albanian villages, fighting battles with guerrillas and harassing international monitors sent to observe.
In what appears to be a slide back into full-scale war, Serb forces with tanks and artillery blasted several ethnic Albanian villages near the north-eastern town of Mitrovica, sending hundreds of civilians fleeing to the hills by foot or on horse-drawn carts.
The Serbs said the attack followed an ambush earlier in the day by rebel forces, something Albanians leaders in the capital, Pristina, denied.
Serb forces are also targeting the 1,000-strong force of unarmed monitors trying to observe the fighting.
In the most serious attack, two monitors from Luxembourg and Lithuania were on Sunday afternoon dragged from their orange-painted jeep by armed police, and beaten up.
"The driver of the vehicle refused to get out, so the police officer dragged him out of the car. As he got out he was punched," said the spokeswoman for the monitoring mission of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Ms Beatrice Lacoste. "The passenger radioed for help but he was hit on the side of the head, dragged out of the car, and punched again." Serb police threatened to shoot monitors from the British base in the south-eastern town of Prizren when they tried to investigate new Serb troop movements late on Sunday.
Elsewhere, a Serb mob surrounded monitors in their base at Lapastica, hurling stones and fireworks at the building, while Albanian staff being driven to work were dragged off buses and searched.
Yesterday police forced ethnic Albanian translators from an OSCE bus, and stopped monitors following army convoys. "One verifier tried to follow tank convoys, he was forced out at gunpoint and frisked," said Ms Lacoste.
Observers nevertheless got through to one village, Okrastica, after a United Nations worker radioed to say Serb forces had arrived, were separating the men from the women and children and marching the men out of the village.
The head of the OSCE mission, Mr William Walker, protested to the Yugoslav government, demanding freedom of movement for his monitors.
This new fighting has caught the international community wrongfooted - all their diplomatic muscle is being exerted to try and get both sides to sign some sort of peace deal by this afternoon in Rambouillet, in France.
The bodies of ethnic Albanians, shot in ones and twos, continue to be found across the province. Over 14 have been killed during the period of the Rambouillet talks.
The only crumb of comfort for the province was an announcement by Russia that it was offering peacekeepers to join NATO troops in policing a possible Kosovo peace deal.
Yugoslavia has so far refused NATO demands for the deployment of peacekeepers, but Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic may relent if the force includes troops from Russia, a traditional ally. For the past three days, senior Russian army and air force officers have been staying in a Belgrade hotel, holding talks with government officials.
But ordinary Kosovans are now fearful of more fighting, with the streets of most towns empty when darkness falls.
"From five o clock all are in their houses, everyone is frightened now," said an ethnic Albanian translator in Pristina.