War In Europe: Serbs wreak revenge after raids

HUNDREDS OF ethnic Albanians have been killed in a massacre in southern Kosovo, unconfirmed reports said yesterday.

The reports claimed that paramilitary gangs had slaughtered hundreds of people and left dozens of houses burning in the southern city of Djakovica.

As refugees described their experiences fleeing the province, it became clear that the Serbs were stepping up their activity in response to Nato air strikes.

Kosovo Albanian sources claimed that 70 bodies had been found in just two houses in Djakovica and that several hundred people had been killed altogether.

Nato sources said an alliance air strike was carried out against a military target in Djakovica on Friday and that immediately afterwards Serbs burned a local mosque as well as houses and other buildings around it.

"After we shot, the Serbs seemed to go crazy," a Nato military source said. "They went down the road to a mosque and set it on fire. We think they were trying to make it look like either we missed or we shot the mosque deliberately."

An ethnic Albanian human rights activist said a Serbian offensive was going on in the regions of Drenice, Llap and Mount Cicavica. "Nato bombs Serb targets and the Serbs in turn attack the Albanian population and the Kosovo Liberation Army," he said. "This is a vicious circle. I fear worse atrocities will happen. Albanian intellectuals have already paid a price."

Actor Hadi Shehu, famous for roles depicting Albanian patriots, was shot dead with his family on Friday, he said.

The latest reports of Serbian attacks followed official accounts in Albania on Friday that the two ethnic Albanian villages, Rahovec and Babaj Boks, had been burned.

The Tirana office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the two villages were seen ablaze in the afternoon by its monitors watching from Albania's mountainous border region. No details of casualties were known.

The Albanian Interior Ministry reported that Serbian forces continued to shoot at targets inside Albania, saying Serbian artillery fired 25 shells at Kamenica, a village and border post just inside Albania.

There are no independent sources of news from Kosovo since the Yugoslav authorities expelled the foreign press, but rumours of mass killings are filtering out from Albania. To those who covered Bosnia and Croatia, these accounts of killing and burning, of separating men from women and children ring true.

"We are cut off from the world. We are cut off from town to town and even from street to street,'' Kosovar Albanian sources quoted one contact in Pristina as saying.