War in the Balkans: Death squads terrorise villages refugees

Ethnic Cleansing

SERB PARAMILITARIES massacred ethnic Albanians in southern Kosovo as recently as last weekend, according to newly arrived refugees in the remote Macedonian mountain village of Malina Mala.

The refugees, who crossed the border on Wednesday night, said six people, including children and old women, were killed by masked gunmen who opened fire indiscriminately in the Kosovo Albanian village of Gylekar.

"They came in at about 2pm and started firing without warning," said Remzi Dauti, a teacher of English, who was in the village at the time.

"They stayed about two or three hours. They beat men and women and took all their valuables. They found an album with wedding photos, and they found the woman in the photos and said 'We want all the jewellery in that photograph'."

Mr Dauti fled into the hills with his family, and later met the mother of Shkurte and Malsore Sadiku, two young girls who were killed by the paramilitaries. "She said that she was running away from the shooting and holding them by the hand when they were all hit," said Mr Dauti. "The mother was injured, but the little girls were both killed. On the first day they gave her drugs, so she didn't feel anything. But when she woke up and realised what had happened, we heard her crying and saying 'What will I do? What will I do?'"

Samet Daliti, an official of the Democratic League of Kosovo and an associate of the moderate Kosovo leader, Ibrahim Rugova, said another massacre happened in the village of Begunce last Sunday. "Five paramilitaries, Arkan's people, came into the village and took eight men. They lined them up and shot them."

Most of the witnesses to the incident including 14 people with gunshot wounds, are still inside Kosovo, sheltering in the village of Stublla. Refugees who arrived in Malina Mala on Monday night said that between 13,000 and 15,000 ethnic Albanians were living in and around Stublla, having gathered there from nearby villages which had been ethnically cleansed.

"I left Stublla yesterday and the situation is awful," said Mr Dauti. "We have no supplies, no food, or medicines. To get water we have to walk seven kilometres. Many, many people are left behind and they have no choice - they will have to leave soon."

He said the village of Lubishde, whose inhabitants fled to Malina Mala on Saturday, was almost completely deserted. "There are just dogs and a few cows," said Mr Dauti. "We spoke to one old man and he said that he and two others are the only ones left."

Humanitarian aid convoys finally reached the stranded refugees in Malina Mala yesterday afternoon, as Nato planes carried out intense bombing just across the border in Kosovo. Throughout the early afternoon the sound of aircraft and the boom of explosions could be heard in the village which is just a few hundred yards from the Kosovo border. Police armed with sniper rifles and automatic weapons accompanied the aid convoy after reports that Serb soldiers had been seen close by.

After four days of being refused access by the Macedonian authorities, a convoy of lorries from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the World Food Programme was finally allowed into Malina Mala in the late afternoon.

Between 4,000 and 6,000 ethnic Albanian refugees, have arrived in the village since Saturday morning.

Early yesterday, the Macedonian police ordered a few hundred to begin a four-hour walk to western Macedonia from where they were to be transported to refugee camps. About 2,000 have been dispersed among the mountain hamlets in an attempt to reduce the terrible overcrowding.

Local ethnic Albanian families in the village have each been putting up as many as 100 refugees in their houses and before the arrival of the convoys food was in short supply.

The humanitarian agencies remain mystified as to why it took so long to gain access. Even after they had made their deliveries Macedonian police checked the outgoing lorries for stowaways and spoke harshly to journalists travelling with the convoy.

"If I see you here again," The Independent was told by one police officer, "I will break your legs."