Tens of Thousands Fleeing Kosovo
Friday, 16 April 1999
B R A Z D A , M A C E D O N I A (AP)
- THE residents of entire villages from previously spared areas of
Kosovo straggled into Macedonia on Friday, the leading edge of
an estimated 100,000 refugees who are being herded out of the
country by Yugoslav troops.
Arriving by the thousands in convoys of tractors and cars, refugees
reported Serb forces had emptied and burned southeastern
towns that had earlier escaped ruin. Serb forces also moved
border control posts from three to six miles away from the
Albanian border.
The pattern suggested the Serbs were clearing strategic swaths
along the Macedonian border to defend the province in the event
of a ground attack by NATO troops.
All 3,000 residents of Perlebnic, an ethnic Albanian village in
southern Kosovo, were escorted out of town by Serb forces
Tuesday, villagers said.
"We hadn't gone five kilometers when we saw the village
burning," said Ramadan Syleymani, who collapsed with his
neighbors in the Brazda refugee camp, Macedonia's largest. Two
more hamlets were on the road behind theirs, he said.
"All the Albanian villages we've been through, we didn't see a
single living soul," he said. "I think they're going to clear it out."
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it believed
100,000 refugees were on the move toward Macedonia; 15,000
have arrived over the last two days.
A Serb purge of western Kosovo was pressing ahead at a similar
pace: Refugees were crossing the Morini border post into Albania
at a rate of 1,000 an hour Friday. Conservative estimates topped
6,000 by evening, with reports of refugee columns stretching
back nine miles.
The crush threatened to overwhelm the meager resources of
Macedonia and Albania, two of the poorest in Europe.
Albania sent army trucks north to ferry refugees away from the
crowded border camp at Kukes. At the crossing, refugees were
handed cups of warm milk and beans to strengthen them after
days on the road.
Many of the latest refugees arriving in Macedonia came from the
region around Gnjilane (Guh-KNEE-la-nay), one of Kosovo's
largest towns, with a prewar population of 70,000. Kosovo
Albanians said Serbs had forced out 10 percent of the city's
ethnic Albanians in the last week, ordering the rest to reopen
shops, which had been shuttered for days while residents
cowered at home.
UNHCR estimated 50,000 were on the road from Gnjilane and
another 20,000 from nearby Urosevac.
In the village of Doguna, 20 miles from Gnjilane, Serbs simply
opened fire to clear the village, killing one man, villagers said.
Turned back by Serb authorities at the border, the villagers said
they spent days in the mountains before trying again, this time
successfully.
Macedonia, which already has taken in 120,000 refugees, is
reluctant to accept any more ethnic Albanians, fearing its own
fragile ethnic balance could collapse into violence.
Defense Minister Nikola Kljusev said there was no room for any
more refugees and demanded that foreign countries step up their
refugee airlifts out of Macedonia.
Macedonia previously closed its borders against earlier mass
expulsions, but the UNHCR said officials have pledged to keep
accepting newcomers. However, Friday's arrivals said they had
waited at the border for up to two days before Macedonia let
them through.
Macedonia agreed Friday to allow aid workers to expand the
main refugee center at Brazda. The tent city currently holds
between 20,000-25,000 refugees on an abandoned airstrip
outside of the Macedonian capital of Skopje, the UNHCR said.
Friday's arrivals slept in the open, on the ground. Exhausted, men,
women, old people and children collapsed on top of their
belongings, sprawled in sleep under a burning sun.
"We're happy to have made it," said Salih Ismaili, even as he
showed what he said were welts from a beating by Macedonian
police on the border. "So far, so good." |
