Fighting Continues Across Kosovo

Russian diplomats pressed Monday for an end to fighting in Kosovo, but shelling and gunfire resounded across the secessionist province, and there was no sign that talks between the warring sides were near.

Serbian forces rained mortar shells onto ethnic Albanian villages in western Kosovo, and a Yugoslav army convoy bearing tanks and trucks full of soldiers rumbled in--the latest evidence of the army’s apparently increasing role in putting down Kosovo’s independence movement.

Six armed ethnic Albanian militants reached deep into Serbian territory to kidnap three Serbian workers at a coal mine in Kosovo Polje, just outside Pristina, the provincial capital, Serbian sources said.

More than 300 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed this year in fighting between Serbian forces and separatists in the predominantly Albanian province.