Fleeing Refugees Tell of Serb Atrocities

Thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees poured out of Kosovo on Monday, telling harrowing tales of atrocities committed as part of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign by Serbian forces.


NATO said Monday it had reliable reports that the Serbian forces of Slobodan Milosevic had "executed" ethnic Albanian intellectuals, among them the editor of the main Albanian-language daily newspaper and a top negotiator at the Rambouillet peace talks.


Western aid agencies and NATO both said that 4,000 refugees an hour are crossing the borders of Kosovo, most of them into Albania.


The refugees were fleeing persecution by military and paramilitary forces and a regional capital in flames. Residents of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, said Serbian forces had set fire to the northern part of the city in response to NATO's bombings.


Unspecified NATO sources also told Reuters that Serbian forces had sealed exits from the city of 200,000 and were preventing ethnic Albanians from leaving. One unconfirmed report spoke of people being herded into the Pristina soccer stadium.


Independent Belgrade Radio B92 said that since Sunday "large numbers of women and children are fleeing [Pristina]." The radio gave no source for its report, but it was believed to be the first time Serb media reported a mass exodus from Pristina.


The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR agreed that a "very grim" picture was building up around the borders of Kosovo - with thousands more refugees waiting to pour not only into Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia, but also to Italy across the Adriatic Sea.


"The roads are full and they keep coming," said UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski. "The pattern that emerges [from refugee accounts] is paramilitary forces arriving, rounding people up and telling them at gunpoint to go. So we are seeing officially sanctioned ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population in Kosovo.''


Thousands of refugees were pouring across the border from Kosovo into Albania on Monday - most of them women, children and the elderly, many of them exhausted and in a state of shock. The European Union's commissioner for humanitarian affairs, Emma Bonino, said there were already from 80,000 to 100,000 refugees in Albania, but added, "It's almost impossible to count them."


Bonino said about 4,000 more refugees have reached Bosnia and 5,000 more are in Montenegro. It appears the Yugoslav army and police forces are directing the refugee flow toward Albania, she said. People forced across the border are being stripped of identity papers, even their car license plates, in an apparent effort to make it impossible for them to return, Bonino said.


"Serbian paramilitaries are killing everybody who refuses to leave their homes," said Adem Basha, a refugee in Albania from Kosovo's second-largest city of Pec, which has a population of about 60,000. "There are lots of unburied people in Pec. The Serbs have settled in the best houses of Pec, which is now 'ethnically cleansed'. Tell the world!"


Another refugee from Pec, Nejmije Kelmendi, 50, trudging up a steep mountain road in Kosovo accompanied by her two daughters, begged a reporter, "Tell NATO that Pec is burning, and where are the ground troops?"


Albanian Prime Minister Pandeli Majko told parliament on Monday another 100,000 refugees from Kosovo were expected to swamp the country soon. "[Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic is trying to throw the Albanians into a big black hole," Majko told Albanian television after the session ended.


The government in Tirana - which rules over the poorest nation in Europe and has few resources to cope with the influx - appealed for international aid. Italy and Germany on Monday immediately promised help, in the form of everything from tents and transport to food and blankets.


Similar plaintive pleas came from Macedonia, where Foreign Minister Alexander Dimitrov urged the EU and NATO to provide rapid economic and military assistance.


Dimitrov said Yugoslav forces were massing on the Macedonia border and that neither his country nor the 12,000 NATO troops there had sufficient military capability to defend Macedonia.


Monday was the sixth day of a NATO bombardment intended to stop Serb-dominated Yugoslavia from waging war on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, who form a 90 percent majority in the province of 2 million and want autonomy or independence from Yugoslavia.


But the immediate Serb response has been to unleash a fresh bloodbath and trigger the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe since the 1992-95 Bosnian war, said Western governments and aid officials.


NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said Monday the alliance and international aid organizations are trying to halt the "humanitarian catastrophe" unfolding in Kosovo and said allied planes have begun direct attacks on Yugoslav forces on the ground.


"We are trying to stop this catastrophe and stop this killing," Solana said. NATO officials and a U.S. White House spokesman said the alliance was not yet considering sending in ground troops, but admitted this was a possibility being discussed.


NATO spokesman Air Commodore David Wilby told reporters that Serbian military and police were giving "an official slant" to ethnic cleansing and intimidation in Kosovo by "cynically issu[ing] official leaflets stating that now it is safe to leave the town or village."


One Kosovo refugee, Bardhyl Kabashi, on Monday described how 15,000 displaced ethnic Albanians from several villages had sought refuge on a hill near the village of Celline.


"The Serbs came to the hill above Celline at midday [Sunday], shooting in the air and telling everybody to sit face down, hands on their heads."


"They shot over their heads, then forced everybody to stand up, raise their hands in the air to make the Serbian sign with three fingers ... and to chant 'Serbia, Serbia'."


He said he saw one man killed for refusing to chant, while three other men were pulled away and shot from behind. "Children screamed as the shooting went on," he said.


The paramilitaries stole money and jewelry before directing the refugees towards the Albanian border.