Civilians Flee Serbian Border Town

Dozens of ethnic Albanian women and children fled into Kosovo on Saturday after an exchange of gunfire in a town just outside the province’s border, NATO peacekeepers said.

The exodus of about 175 people was the latest departure from Dobrosin, a predominantly ethnic Albanian town in southeastern Serbia. Hundreds of people have fled the area in the last two months, streaming into Gnjilane, the closest town in Kosovo, about 30 miles southeast of the provincial capital, Pristina. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.

The area near Dobrosin has been the site of sporadic clashes between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian police. There are fears that the southern Serbian region could be the scene of renewed fighting similar to the conflict in Kosovo last year, which led to NATO attacks against Yugoslavia.

The newly formed rebel group is called the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army. The name comes from the three main towns in an area that is mostly populated by ethnic Albanians and located in Serbia proper, just east of Kosovo’s provincial border. The rebels’ commanders acknowledge that many of them are former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters. They say they are trying to protect villagers in the region from attacks by Serbian forces.

The refugees from Dobrosin crossed a checkpoint being guarded about 2 1/2 miles inside Kosovo by U.S. Sgt. Kelly Leaverton of Salem, Ore.

“Last night, they rushed through here,” he said. The villagers were traveling in cars, on horseback and on tractors, he added.

Meanwhile, about 70 Serbs demonstrated in the Kosovo town of Gracanica--the site of a historic Serbian Orthodox monastery--to protest a grenade attack on a Serbian home. Five people were injured, one seriously, said Mark Cox, a NATO press spokesman.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeepers sealed off the city after violence broke out, Cox said.

Infuriated at the attack, Serbs in Gracanica set up roadblocks on the highway to Pristina and hurled stones at passing Albanian cars, the Belgrade-based Beta news agency reported.

Thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed by Serbian forces during Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s 18-month crackdown against separatists in Kosovo. Since NATO bombing forced the Serbian troops to withdraw last June, ethnic attacks and killings have been regular occurrences in the province.