Serbian Shelling Scatters Kosovo Refugees

Serbian forces shelled ethnic Albanian villages south and west of this provincial capital for most of the day Sunday, witnesses said.

The attacks, which began in early morning and continued into the afternoon, sent hundreds of refugees stampeding to safety and sparked wind-whipped fires that burned farmhouses and fields.

A Reuters Television crew filming south of the main Pristina-Pec highway near the town of Komorane saw villages pounded by fire from Serbian tanks and artillery.

Kisna Reka, Nekovce, Stankovce and Fustice were in flames.

The ethnic Albanians’ Kosovo Information Center reported shelling of villages in Stimlje to the south. The center, whose reports could not be confirmed, said Serbian infantry units entered two villages and set fire to ethnic Albanian houses.

Ethnic Albanians make up 90% of the population of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo.

Western journalists who reached an area south of Pristina and west of the Pristina-Prizren highway reported hundreds of refugees on the move, traveling by tractor and on foot, to escape Serbian shelling around Ribari.

Serbian sources in Pristina, who asked not to be named, said government police and military forces had come under attack early in the morning in the area between Komorane and Lipovica and had returned fire.

The sources said one police officer was killed but they had no other word of casualties.

The Kosovo Liberation Army began fighting actively in March to wrest Kosovo away from Serbia.