Kosovo Fighting Spills Over Into Albania, Raising Fears

One of the government’s broadest assaults on separatists in Kosovo province spilled into neighboring Albania on Sunday as Yugoslav and Albanian troops traded gunfire across their border for more than two hours.

The predawn shooting at a mountain crossing produced no casualties but underscored concern in Western capitals over the possibility of a wider war across the southern Balkans.

Most of the fighting in the region Sunday occurred well inside Yugoslavia along three roads that have been barricaded for weeks by ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The rebels were resisting a drive by Yugoslav army troops and Serbian police to clear the roads with tanks and bulldozers to empty rebel-held villages along the way.

The 3-day-old offensive by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces appeared aimed at splintering the heart of rebel territory, which embraces one-third of the province, and blocking routes to sanctuaries in Albania from which the guerrillas smuggle arms.

Both sides reported casualties as explosions and shooting rattled dozens of red-roofed villages in the hills west of Pristina, the provincial capital. At least two Serbian police officers and five ethnic Albanians were listed as killed.

Police closed the battle zone to reporters and foreign relief workers. More than 300 dazed and exhausted villagers escaped the area by foot and tractor-drawn cart to Bujance. Three children came with severe shrapnel wounds, officials in the village said.

At least 400 people have died since the eruption last February of open guerrilla warfare. Kosovo is part of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic. But 90% of the province’s 2 million people are ethnic Albanian, and the growing rebel army’s demand for independence has wide support.

The insurgency has been fed by Milosevic’s brutal police crackdown in Kosovo and the flow from Albania of weapons that were looted from government arsenals during a collapse of civil order there last year.

Reluctant to crack down on its ethnic kin, Albania’s government has ignored the Kosovo rebel bases. Western officials say Albania’s depleted armed forces, far smaller than the Kosovo rebel army, are too weak to act in any case.

Sunday’s border shooting erupted as Yugoslav army troops pursued a rebel group that was retreating through the mountains toward Albania.

The Yugoslav troops and their border post came under machine-gun fire from somewhere on the Albanian side of the border, according to Yugoslavia’s state news agency. It said the troops managed to prevent the rebels from crossing the border.

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Albania’s Interior Ministry said the Yugoslav troops tried to shoot their way through an Albanian border checkpoint at Morini, 50 miles southwest of Pristina, but were driven back by prolonged gunfire from Albanian border troops, local police and armed civilians in the village.

It was the first reported clash between the two governments’ forces during the Kosovo fighting but not the first incident to cause alarm. On June 16, Yugoslav troops on the border shot to death an Albanian shepherd inside Albania, dragged his body into Yugoslav territory and shot at relatives trying to retrieve it.

Albania periodically accuses Yugoslav forces of lobbing shells over the border, as they reportedly did last week to help thwart a major infiltration by about 750 rebels.

Western governments are concerned that fighting could engulf not only Albania but also neighboring Macedonia, which has a large, restive ethnic Albanian minority.

To prevent that, the United States and its European allies first tried to threaten Milosevic with intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, hoping to force a withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo. But the rapid growth of the rebel army--and its approach in favor of peace talks aimed at a cease-fire.

As part of that strategy, U.S. officials are seeking support among their NATO allies for increased military aid that would help Albania assert control of its territory and deprive the Kosovo rebels of their bases.