Kosovo Death Toll Climbs Amid Clashes

Twelve people died Saturday in fighting in the Drenica region of central Kosovo, the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Information Center said .

Reuters journalists saw at least one village burning in the hills in the Drenica region at dusk Saturday. Police used an armored vehicle to block a road entering the area from a main highway, and three tanks moved along the highway toward Pristina, the Kosovo capital.

More than 1,000 people have died and 300,000 have become refugees since a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists began in February in the Serbian province. Ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs 9-1 in the province.

Five police officers died when their vehicle hit a mine Friday, and two others were killed in a separatist rebel attack in the same region, Serbian sources reported.

The Serbian sources also said that minor clashes in the Drenica region ended by early afternoon Saturday, with Serbian police repelling the rebel attacks. Police did not suffer any casualties, they said.

In a separate report, the Kosovo Information Center, or KIC, said 68 people were killed in a three-day Serbian offensive against villages around Mt. Cicavica, northwest of Pristina. Serbian sources said they lost three police officers and one soldier in the fighting.

The Serb-run Media Center said Friday that Serbian police killed Fehmi Ladrovici, 41, a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, in the Cicavica region. The report said the offensive ended Friday.

On Saturday, the KIC reported that 56 people died in fighting around the northern town of Vucitrn in recent days.

In northern Kosovo, the U.N.’s refugee chief visited ethnic Albanians staying in a village mosque Saturday and promised to try to protect them from Serbian forces who drove them from their homes.

“We saw people who were totally traumatized, almost in a coma” from fear, Sadako Ogata told a news conference in Pristina after traveling to the village of Resnik, where about 2,000 Kosovo Albanians have taken refuge in and around the mosque.

Meanwhile, five Balkan countries Saturday endorsed NATO’s decision to prepare a task force for possible airstrikes against Yugoslav forces in Kosovo.

A joint statement issued after a meeting of defense ministers in Skopje, the Macedonian capital, said the ministers were seriously concerned about the Kosovo violence.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen was among the defense ministers who also signed an agreement establishing a southeast European peace force.

The force would engage in humanitarian activities such as aid relief and preserving truces.

Also signing the agreement were defense ministers from NATO members Italy, Turkey and Greece and from five prospective alliance members in the Balkans: Macedonia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania.

After the U.N. Security Council authorized unspecified further action if Serbian and Yugoslav forces continue their offensive in Kosovo, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization late last week firmed up preparations for air and missile attacks.