Rebels Boost Attacks on Serb Forces

Ethnic Albanian guerrillas intensified attacks on Yugoslav forces along major roadways in Kosovo on Tuesday and were suspected in an ambush of civilians.

The separatist Kosovo Liberation Army killed at least one police officer in a bold attack in the northern Kosovo city of Kosovska Mitrovica, according to another officer there. And the guerrillas also were believed responsible for firing on a civilian bus carrying soldiers and police. The vehicle was riddled with bullet holes, and several windows were shattered, but no one was seriously injured, police said.

In addition, an Israeli journalist and a Serbian driver were wounded near Kacanik, on the main highway to the province’s border with Macedonia, in another of the three ambushes believed to have been carried out during the day by the KLA.

Reports of KLA ambushes in predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo have been mounting over the past several days, deepening fears of minority Serbs in the province and possibly complicating implementation of a peace plan accepted by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Thursday.

That plan calls for the withdrawal of all Yugoslav troops from this province of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic, Serbia, though a token security force would later be allowed to return. NATO says that once the withdrawal takes place, the alliance will cease its bombing of Yugoslavia and send troops to begin escorting more than a million ethnic Albanian refugees back to their homes in Kosovo.

Part of the peace plan is the disarming of KLA fighters to protect the province’s Serbs, who have been estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000. But after 77 days of relentless bombing, Kosovo’s Serbs don’t trust NATO’s promise that it will stop the KLA’s drive for independence from Yugoslavia. Indeed, the KLA’s daily attacks have fanned fears that Serbs, in their turn, will flee the province.

Although the Milosevic government pronounced the KLA officially dead several weeks ago, Yugoslav sources have admitted privately in recent interviews that KLA guerrillas are taking a mounting toll on Serbian police and civilians alike.

For weeks now, North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes have been hammering Yugoslav troops along the KLA’s main infiltration route from neighboring Albania, and, by the Pentagon’s estimate, the KLA now has about 17,000 fighters in Kosovo.

Since many Serbs here think Milosevic sold them down the river by accepting virtually all of NATO’s demands last week, there is a serious risk of more revenge attacks against ethnic Albanian civilians as the security forces retreat. There were long bursts of gunfire Tuesday night in various neighborhoods of Pristina, the provincial capital, after several weeks of relative calm.

Throughout the day, an unknown ethnic Albanian man broke in on Serbian police radio frequencies and taunted officers with threats. The officers responded with some of their own.

“It’s time for you to leave,” the Albanian voice crackled over a police walkie-talkie. The announcement was followed by a brief interlude of Albanian music.

“You are singing now, but this will be your last song,” a police officer’s voice warned.

“Did you buy your escape tickets?” the Albanian voice teased. “There will be no Serbs left in Kosovo. When you start off for Serbia, how many of you will reach there alive?”

“Don’t worry,” the police officer fired back. “We’ll be shooting at you too.”

Over the past few weeks, the KLA has killed and wounded police officers in Pristina as well as the southern city of Prizren, near the town of Malisevo and along several roads throughout the province.

A Serbian civilian bus driver died Tuesday from wounds suffered Saturday night when an express bus headed to Pristina from Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, was ambushed. The bus first came under automatic rifle fire near the northern Kosovo city of Podujevo, in an area once controlled by KLA hard-liners. The bus driver and four passengers were wounded in a second attack near the village of Besinje, just north of Pristina.

In a similar attack Sunday, a Serbian civilian was killed and another wounded when a gunman opened fire on a bus near Kosovska Mitrovica, about 25 miles northwest of Pristina, police reported.

In Tuesday’s ambushes, the civilian bus carrying police and soldiers was attacked on a road outside the village of Crnoljevo, near Stimlje in southern Kosovo. The KLA has launched repeated attacks in the area over the past several weeks.

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Hear Times staff writer Paul Watson discuss the current mood in Kosovo and his coverage of the war. The audio report is part of the special “Dispatch From Kosovo” section on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/dispatch.