25,000 Kosovo Refugees Camp After Fleeing Serb Advance

Parking their tractors bumper-to-bumper, about 25,000 Kosovo refugees camped out in fields Thursday, terrified that Serbian police soon would be arresting their men for alleged membership in the rebel army. Food, water and hope appeared nowhere in sight.

Serbian forces seemed to have halted their advance, which drove the ethnic Albanians from their homes and farms into a huge encampment around this village 45 miles southwest of the provincial capital, Pristina.

Carloads of armed Serbian police, some escorting Western diplomatic observers, cruised back and forth on the road past the refugees, provoking curses as well as instilling fear.

On the horizon, black smoke rose slowly over the Albanian villages abandoned since the Serbs launched their pincers attack Tuesday. Hundreds of police and soldiers, backed by armored vehicles and trucks hauling heavy artillery, patrolled nearby.

Until this week’s attacks, the Istinic area was one of the last strongholds of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which is fighting for independence from Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia.

Rrok Berisha, a member of Kosovo’s unauthorized ethnic Albanian parliament, said most of the refugees came from 40 nearby villages that Serbian police shelled in the past few days.

Kosovo fighting already has created 265,000 refugees. With winter fast approaching, Western officials fear the worst if urgent help isn’t provided for the 50,000 or so living in the hills and forests.