Serbian Police Order Refugees to Leave Camp and Go Home

Thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees were driven from a squalid camp in western Kosovo on Saturday after Serbian police in armored vehicles told them to leave the area immediately.

The refugees, who had numbered as many as 40,000 near Istinic until Friday, piled on tractors to attempt to return to their villages--many of which have been razed--or to find other refugee pockets nearby.

Serbian police cruised the area in an armored personnel carrier with a loudspeaker, telling refugees to immediately return to their homes. By day’s end, the pro-government Serbian Media Center said all the refugees had left the encampment.

International observers still fear that the refugees, who fled a nearby Serbian offensive against Albanian separatists, are at risk. Their dispersal frustrated aid workers trying to feed them and treat the sick.

“The situation is very dire,” said Anthea Web of the World Health Program in Istinic, a village 45 miles west of Pristina, Kosovo’s provincial capital. “They are leaving Istinic, but we are not quite certain where they are going.”

Other trouble spots involving trapped or fleeing refugees were developing elsewhere in the secessionist Serbian province, racked by a six-month war that shows no sign of ending. Serbia, along with the smaller Montenegro, are the two remaining republics in Yugoslavia.

Heavy fighting drove thousands of other ethnic Albanians from their villages in the Drenica region of Kosovo on Saturday, days after their cautious return to attempt resettling, ethnic Albanian sources said.

A separate refugee crisis was developing on Kosovo’s border with Montenegro after as many as 4,000 refugees were refused entry Friday. Montenegro has already been overrun with 40,000 Kosovo refugees.