Fighting Flares Anew in Macedonia

Government troops fought ethnic Albanian rebels Tuesday in the mountains of northwestern Macedonia in what appeared to be the fiercest clash in the area since March.

In Tetovo, Macedonia’s main ethnic Albanian town, tank and machine gun fire could be heard from the Sar mountains near the villages of Sipkovica and Gajre. A Macedonian radio station said rebels had attacked army positions near Gajre.

Residents, who gathered in Tetovo’s main square as night fell, said it was the heaviest fighting they had heard since the army pushed guerrillas back from positions above the town at the end of March. Several columns of smoke billowed up.

The fighting followed a two-day lull in the conflict, which broke out in February and has raised fears of a civil war splitting the Balkan nation of 2 million people.

In recent weeks, violence has been concentrated in villages to the northeast of the capital, Skopje, rather than around Tetovo to the west, where guerrillas had fought to the outskirts of the town before being repulsed in an army counterattack.

Western defense experts said the rebels appeared to be trying to open a second front in the conflict but were being impeded by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in neighboring Kosovo who are blocking their supply lines.