Kosova Crisis Center
link to alb-net
- The List of the massacred and executed people by Serbian Police in the village of Izbica, in Drenica
- The list of the killed massacred by Serbian Police in the villages of Runik, Kllodernic and Turiqec.
- The serbian forces are continuing their attacks against the villages with displaced population
- Consensus Grows to Send Ground Troops
- How the City of Peja was Destroyed by Serbian Barbarians in 1999 AD
- Prishtina, once an epitome of a bustling city is now a ghost town! (NY Times)
- Countless Refugee Accounts Give Details of Mass Killings (NY Times)
The List of the massacred and
executed people in the village of Izbica, in Drenica.
Drenica, April 6th (Kosovapress) Name Age Village Executed
* Idriz Xhemajli, (72), Izbic; * Halit Rama, Izbic; * Brahim Bajra, (79), Trnov; * Hetem
Osmani, (67), Izbic; * Muharrem Osmani, Izbic; * Kajtaz Kajtazi, Trnov; * Muhamet Behrami,
(61), Izbic; * Nuredin Behrami, (79); * Ilaz Bajra, (70) Trnov; * Avdullah Duraku, Buroj;
* Fazli Bajraj, (62), Trnov; * Hajzer Gashi, Vojnik; * Dibran Duraku, Buroj; * Mustaf
Sejdiu, Vojnik; * Beqir Dragaj, Vojnik; * Mustaf Muja, Vojnik; * Tahir Zeka, Buroj; *
Milazim Zeka, Buroj; * Rifat Hoti (65), Jashanic; * Qerim Hoti (52), Jashanic; * Zeqir
Shpati (60), Jashanic; * Rrustem Hoti (72), Jashanic; * Ilaz Dervishi (76), Leqin; *
Muhamet Kadriu, Izbic; * Rexh Qelaj (73), Leqin; * Hazir Hoti (67), Jashanic; * Ismet
Draga (30), Leqin; * Bajram Dervishi (53), Kastriot; * Salih Shala, Leqin; * Hamdi Doqi
(40), Krnik; * Metush Qeli (69), Leqin; * Haxhi Beka, Kllodernic; * Sala Beka, Kllodernic;
* Qerime Hajra, Rakinic; * Demush Behrami (66), Izbic; * Isuf Shala (64), Buroj; * Zenel
Hoti, Plluzhin; * Halil Morina , Gllarev; * Rrahim Krasniqi, Vojnik; * Jetullah Kelmendi,
Vojnik; * Lah Fetahu, Turiec; * Bajram Neziri, Vojnik; * Hamdi Demaj, Vojnik; * Smajl
Qelaj (62), Leqin; * Zymer Shala (60), * Jetullah Thai, Ozdrim; * Shaban Rexhepi (85),
Izbic; his cadaver is carbonized * Halit Muslija (62), Klina; executed * Ilaz Muslija
(57), Klina; * Beqir Muslija (59), Klina; * Muhamet Muslija (61), Klina; * Naim Muslija
(20), Klina; * Tahir Hoti (55), Jashanic; * Florim Krasniqi (30), Vojnik; he was
handicapped person, now being executed * Sokol Duraku (36), Buroj; executed * Zeqir
Kelmendi (85), massacred and carbonized * Mehmet Aliu (64), Izbic; executed * Halit Begani
(52), Buroj; * Ajet Thai (71), * Sheremet Thai (49), handicapped person * Hajdar
Bajraktari (54), Jashanic; executed * Azem Shabani (74), Buroj, * Sabit Qollopeku (55) ,
Shtupel; * Rexh Duraku (87), Buroj; * Sali Dervishi (67), Leqin; * Selman Loshi (78),
Padalisht; * Jashar Loshi (48), Padalisht; * Sami Loshi (25), Padalisht; * Shefqet Hoti,
Morina; * Vehbi Hoti, Morina; * Rabishe Osmani, Izbic;, carbonized * Osman Dajaku,
Rakinice; * Bel Duraku Buroje; * Sahit Duka, Ozrim; executed * Pajazit Ceka, Krnic; * Zaim
Bajrami (36), Izbic; medical technic, executed * Ajet Beqiri (39), Padalisht; executed *
Enver Bajraj (32), Izbic; * Muj Shala (63), Leqin; * Ali Draga, Leqin; * Murat Dragaj,
Leqin; * Rrustem Dragaj, Leqin; * Bajram Bajra, (72) Izbic; * Sami Bajra, (19) Izbic; *
Islam Haliti, Izbic; handicapped * Besart Hajra, Izbic; * Sofie Dragaj, Leqin; * Halim
Shala, (62) * Isuf Shala, (55) * Rrahim Tahiri (83), Vojnik; * Gani Demaj, Vojnik; * Muj
Rexhepi (49), Izbic; * Hajriz Dragaj (42), Leqin; * Deli Krasniqi (58), Vojnik; * Ram
Kotori (58), Vojnik; * Ram Thai (67), Buroj; * Fejz Hoxha (83), Vojnik; * Sadik Hoti (65),
Jashanic; * Azem Osmani (71), Izbic; * Asllan Bajra (61), Trnov; * Asllani Açareva, *
Hamit Ibrahimi, Buroj; * Muhamet Hoti (63), Vojnik; * Ramadan Raci, Jelloc; * Qazim
Bajrami (67), Izbic; * Musli Doqi (36), Grapc; * Ram Syla, Shtupelit, * Zenel Veliqi,
Polac; * Hamz Qupeva, Jashanic; * Dibran Thai, Buroj; * Hysen Shala (63), Buroj; * Rrahim
Kotori (76), Vojnik; * Cen Dragaj (77), Leqin; * Murat Dragaj (67), Leqin; * Hamit Thai
(77), Buroj, * Bajram Caku, Buroj; * Isuf Shala, Buroj; * Halit Hajdari, Plluzhin; *
Hajriz Shala, Buroj; * Hasan Mustafa, Obri; * Bislim Bajraktari, Resnik; * Qazim Xhemajli,
Likoc; * Rabishe Osmani, Izbic; * Qerime Mula, Jashanic; * Zade Dragaj (90) Leqin;
There is another unidentified executed person who has been with other massacred people.
This is the list of massacred people in Izbica but fortunately there are 6 persons who
have survived from this massacre.Before they were buried they have been filmed and we have
also testimonies of three witnesses who were among the lucky one to survive. The execution
has been executed by dividing the people in four groups of 30-40 people for each group in,
while this has been executed by six soldiers for each group selected by their superiors.
According to the confirmed informations this list is not a final one.
The list of the killed massacred in the villages of
Runik, Kllodernic and Turiqec.
Drenica, April 6th (Kosovapress)The list of the persons executed and massacred from the
Balkan criminals that are found killed in the villages of Runik, Kllodernic and Turiqevc.
(according to the confirmed informations, these lists are not final ones).
Name Age Village
Islam Miftari (69), Runik
Mexhit Miftari,(27), Runik
Nuhi Miftari (14), Runik
Rifat Miftari (49), Runik
Rrahman Miftari (48), Runik
Mustaf Hyseni (50), Kastriot
Rrustem Miftari ( 65), Runik
Emine Latifi (62), Runik
Bajram Hasani (85), Kllodernic
Kadri Hasani (65), Kllodernic
Kamer Spahiu (48), Kastriot
Hivzi Çitaku (25), Runik
Hatmane Osmani(25), Kllodernic
Ahmet Osmani (40), Kllodernic
Naim Kajtazi (22), Kllodernic
Jahir Hajrizi (55), Runik
Bashkim Imeri (22), Kllodernic
Isuf Mula (45), Vitak
Osman Spahiu (55), Vitak
Zeqir Mula (50), Vitak
His daughter-in-law (27), Vitak
Rexhep Osmani (35), Kllodernic
Xhevdet Osmani (30), Kllodernic
Idriz Sejdiu (50), Runik
Sadri Abazi (60), Kllodernic
Shaban Osmani (70), Kllodernic
Ramadan Beka (65), Kllodernic
Shyqyri Mula (42), Vitak
Murat Topalli (67), Vitak
Hysni Musa (33), Prekaz i Epërm
Ismet Spahiu (40), Vitak
Osman Mula (60), Vitak (burnt in his tractor)
Fetah Spahiu (35), Vitak
Mehmet Aliu, Rezall
Valdete Spahiu (12), Vitak
Zekiri Fetah Mula (17), Kllodernic
Driton Gani Mula (17), Kllodernic
Abedin Gani Mula , Kllodernic
Fegjri (Zen) Gashi (22)
Nazmi Osmani (24), Kllodernic
Sheremet Mula (41)
Ismet Smakaj (64)
Halime Smakaj (71)
Miradie Mulaj
Shaban Mulaj (84)
Haxhi Beka with two daughters and his wife
Xhemail Beka
Gjevat Osmani.
Man Mulaj, found burnt.
According to confirmed informations, this is not the final list.
The serbian forces are continuing
their attacks against the villages with displaced population
Podujevë, April 6th (Kosovapress) Today, since the early hours of the day, the barbaric
serbs have started an offensive of broadly destructive dimensions against the villages:
Sfeqël, Balloc, Lladoc, Shajkoc, Batllavë, Miroc, Livadicë, Shtedim, villages where
have been placed over 70 000 inhabitants displaced from the other villages of Llapi. The
population is again expelled, obliged to get into the mountains, while the units of KLA
have placed themselves in defense of this population, fighting face to face with serbian
forces and doing an extraordinary resistance. The general situation in the Operative Zone
of Llap, is very grave. The displaced population of this side is passing through its most
difficult and painful days, being confronted with life or death. Only in the environ of
Podujeva, there are over 90 000 displaced people, which have remained without shelters and
a large amount of them are sheltered in mountains, without food, clothes, medicines for
the wounded and sick persons.
Consensus Grows to Send Ground Troops
By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 6, 1999; Page A1
With remarkable speed, a consensus supporting the deployment of U.S. ground forces in
Kosovo has formed in Washington, and a Washington Post-ABC News Poll shows a similarly
dramatic shift in public opinion, with 55 percent of the public saying they would support
such a change in policy.
Even as the Clinton administration continues to rule out ground forces until "a
permissive environment" exists in Kosovo, a chorus of foreign policy experts and key
members of Congress have been making the case that deployment may be inevitable.
They argue that, with the air war failing to achieve its immediate objectives of stopping
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, it may take such a risky commitment to deal with
the mushrooming humanitarian disaster unfolding on the ground there and to salvage the
credibility of the NATO alliance.
Foreign policy analysts say some of the old notions of left and right have gone out the
window in the post-Cold War environment. Instead, the consensus for what could be a wider
war in Europe fuses humanitarian instincts of many on the left who are outraged by the
scenes of refugees flooding into Macedonia with realpolitik advocates who argue that U.S.
power and prestige must be protected in a conflict with a leader like Milosevic.
"Very early on, there was among the foreign policy establishment a realization that
this was real, that this was not just a bit of bombing, but that it basically was a
declaration of war," said Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a former
National Security Council adviser to President Clinton. "People realized what we were
engaged in was war and that the stakes were far grander and far larger than the
administration painted them."
Dissenters have been few and far between, despite a post-Vietnam reluctance to commit
ground forces in combat and a perception that the American public won't tolerate
casualties on the battlefield. Some Republicans strongly oppose the use of ground forces,
but with Congress in recess until next week, it isn't clear how divided the legislative
branch is about what the administration should do next.
The drumbeat in favor of ground forces by the foreign policy establishment, coupled with
the grim images of the flood of refugees leaving Kosovo, has had an immediate-and
significant -- impact on public opinion.
Last week, a CBS News poll found that 41 percent of those surveyed supported ground forces
to help end the conflict, with 52 percent opposed. The Post-ABC News poll, conducted
yesterday, shows 55 percent in favor and 41 percent against. The margin of error is plus
or minus 5 percentage points.
The poll, based on interviews with 509 randomly sampled Americans, found that support for
the NATO airstrikes had risen from 55 percent last week to 68 percent. About two out of
three Americans -- 68 percent -- said the airstrikes would not be sufficient to achieve
NATO's goals and that ground troops would be necessary to finish the job.
Public opinion analysts cautioned, however, that the public still has reservations about
the use of force under messy conditions. "There's very little appetite for
casualties," said Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center. "Support there now
would evaporate if the specter of a quagmire were to be evoked by Kosovo."
For now, the events in Yugoslavia have brought together disparate elements along the
political spectrum in support of a more robust U.S. response to the evidence that Serbian
forces have used the bombing campaign as an excuse to drive ethnic Albanians out of
Kosovo.
"With the Cold War over, one of the things that happened on the liberal wing of
politics is an increasing desire to do humanitarian things with foreign policy," said
Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future.
The arguments in favor of preserving U.S. and NATO credibility have, if anything, been
made even more strongly by the foreign policy elite. On almost any day, the editorial
pages of major newspapers and television talk shows have been filled with such commentary
from former secretaries of state and members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed
Services committees.
The policy debate has grave implications for Clinton and Vice President Gore but also may
affect attitudes toward Republican candidates seeking the 2000 presidential nomination.
Republican candidates remain divided on the deployment of ground forces.
Analysts said yesterday the war in Yugoslavia has given a short-term boost to Arizona Sen.
John McCain (R), who was an early and outspoken advocate of using whatever means necessary
to win the war and explicitly put the issue of ground troops on the table when others were
not talking about it. "He's taken amazing strides in making himself a credible
candidate," said Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R), who leads the GOP field in the polls, was judged more
harshly for having been more tentative in his statements, although he attempted to clarify
his position yesterday during a telephone interview from Texas. He wouldn't say
definitively whether he judged the administration's policy a failure but said a stable
Europe and the refugee crisis meant that it is in the U.S. interest "to win" the
war. "All options ought to be on the table," he said. "If the mission is to
win, then I think all options ought to be available to the military planners."
How the City of Peja was Destroyed by Serbian Barbarians in 1999 AD
Centuries to Create, Days to Despoil
By Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, April 5, 1999; Page A20
ROZAJE, Yugoslavia – It began with a throaty rumble, as the tanks lurched out the
front gate of their compound and onto the darkened street. Moving into position, they
pointed their barrels into the heart of Pec, Kosovo's second-largest city, and opened
fire.
It takes centuries to build a city like Pec, but Serb-led military forces would prove it
can take just days to destroy it.
Not since World War II has Europe seen entire cities purged of the people within them. But
beginning within hours of the first NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia on March 24, Yugoslav
troops, Serbian police units and paramilitary groups forced 80,000 ethnic Albanians –
Pec's entire non-Serb population – to flee, all the while looting, shelling and
burning their shops and homes.
The assault on Pec foreshadowed the emptying days later of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo
and its largest city. And it provided the first signal to the region of the scale of the
refugee crisis that would soon engulf it.
It also adds to mounting evidence, gathered from the testimony of refugees and the
analysis of Western officials, that the mass expulsion of Kosovo's majority ethnic
Albanian population was a premeditated act, systematically carried out and timed to begin
as the first NATO bombs fell.
By March 28, four days after the expulsions began, refugees from Pec began arriving here
at the border of Montenegro, Serbia's much smaller sister republic in the Yugoslav
federation. Their individual accounts of survival and flight from Pec blend into a common
story of the destruction of their city.
It begins with the tanks.
"Ba-Boom, the whole night. This was the music," said Jauna Higiena, who cowered
in the basement of her family home day and night in the Kapishnisca, an ethnic Albanian
neighborhood. To venture into the street during a lull was to risk being shot.
The shelling continued for several days, terrorizing the population. People kept the
curtains drawn and their children quiet and awaited the armed men.
The roundup itself followed, and it was by turns methodical and anarchic. Troops wearing
green went door to door ordering the occupants into the street. Police wearing blue
directed the throng into the city center. The paramilitary groups who moved between them
but answered to no one wore gray camouflage, ski masks and fingerless gloves. They kicked
in doors and demanded money and gold, and sometimes they took custody of men of fighting
age, who were led away and have not been seen since.
"We were not allowed to look around, or to look back," said Isa Rame, 49, of the
stunned human column he joined with only the clothes on his back. "My daughter is 18
years old. She looked back and said, 'It seems our houses are on fire.'"
'In Town It Was Quiet'
Pec – in Serbian it is pronounced "Pesch" – straddles the Bistrica
River in western Kosovo. Its old city is a maze of cobblestone streets lined with the
shops of goldsmiths who fashioned the jewelry that Kosovo Albanians collect partly for
beauty, mostly as life savings. The Albanians, who call the city where they have lived for
centuries "Peje," were an overwhelming majority there, as they were throughout
Kosovo, a Serbian province. Although most residents of Pec are Muslims, they speak
admiringly of the Orthodox Christian monastery on the edge of town, with its gorgeous view
of the plain and the mountains rising at the border with Montenegro, barely 30 miles away.
Until 12 days ago, Pec had largely been immune from the ethnic conflict that has torn at
Kosovo for the past 13 months. The countryside was a stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation
Army, the secessionist ethnic Albanian rebel movement whose roots in the city were not
deep. "In the town it was quiet," Lumtunje Arifaj said. "In the villages it
was something else, but in the town it was okay."
'The Houses Were Burning'
All through the night of Wednesday, March 24, the tanks fired from just 300 yards away,
sending shells over Jauna Higiena's house into town. The rounds left phosphorescent trails
in the sky. On the other side of the house, police in a nearby station fired on a mosque,
shattering its windows. When morning came, Higiena tried to go to work. A soldier on the
street told her to go back inside.
That night, shots peppered the house. Higiena, her mother, two brothers and sister crawled
out the back door and made their way on their hands and knees to a garden shed. In the
morning, she was allowed to go to work, on streets empty except for her. Her boss sent her
home. The shelling resumed at 3:30 p.m.
"You couldn't see anything but fire and smoke," Higiena said. "All the
houses were burning."
Across town, in a subdivision he built, Beke Zekaj was gathering his family. A successful
businessman with a cable television company in Pristina, he was also a member of the
Democratic League of Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian political organization that supports
independence for Kosovo through peaceful means. When the shelling began, he said, he
called "my members." All agreed they were not armed for a fight.
The homes of ethnic Albanian political activists would be the first torched, along with
the shops of the old city, the center of ethnic Albanian commercial life.
'To Save Our Heads'
By the weekend, the expulsion was proceeding in full force. The soldiers came to Higiena's
street on Sunday morning. She had seen people rushing by the previous day. "We don't
know where we are going," someone told her. "We are just going. We just wanted
to save our heads." When the soldiers arrived at 10:30 a.m., Higiena's family tumbled
into the throng. It was moving toward the center of town.
Across the river, Drilon Zeka, 14, was still asleep when his uncle saw the troops outside
and announced it was time to flee. He slipped on sneakers still wet from being washed and
hurried downstairs, terrified.
There was a forest near their house, but when Zeka heard shots coming from that direction
he ducked into a garage. So did his 9-year-old brother, Qendrim, and two neighbors, both
age 20. They hid Qendrim first, giving him the best place, between stacks of wood,
because, Zeka recalled, "we had heard that in Drenica [site of a September massacre
of ethnic Albanians] they had killed children." Then they tried to hide themselves.
The soldiers found them all. The boys were ordered to join the column of people in the
street.
'We Are Arkan's Men'
"We are Arkan's men," said the man standing in Zoje Kastrati's house.
He wore civilian clothes, not the uniform associated with the paramilitary forces of
Zeljko Raznatovic, a Bosnian Serb whose indictment for alleged war crimes in the Bosnian
war was announced by the international tribunal in The Hague last week. The man said he
wanted money. The Kastratis gave him 3,000 German marks, the equivalent of $1,600. Then
the man took all the gold jewelry he could find.
He also tried to drag Zoje's husband, Mahmet, down the staircase of the four-story house,
insisting he was a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The same thing was happening across town, at the house of Fatima Kelmendi, 80, the sister
of Kastrati's stepfather. Soldiers led away her 45-year-old son, Isuf Kelmendi, along with
another man. Moments later, Fatima Kelmendi heard a shot. Her relatives say the old woman
is alone in believing her son is alive.
In the Kastrati home, the intruders relented when her husband showed them the address on
his identity card. The paper named not a village known as a guerrilla stronghold, but a
city street. Satisfied, they told the family members they could stay another three days,
which – to their own amazement – they did. On their way out, their terrorizers
joked that the men of the house should join them for a drink.
"We've got money!" one said.
'Give Me Deutschemarks'
At Zekaj's subdivision, the first grenade came over the compound wall at 4:20 a.m. Sunday.
It exploded on the front steps of an empty house. A second grenade landed between two
houses. No one was hurt, but Zekaj knew it was time to leave.
By midmorning, the men had created an opening in the home's 12-foot concrete wall.
"The first block was hard to get out," Zekaj said. "After that, it was
easy."
The escape convoy, led by the family patriarch's Mercedes, headed straight to Montenegro.
They were just a mile from the border when they stopped at a familiar building; once
Zekaj's summer home, it was now a police checkpoint. A masked man there had a Mercedes of
his own.
"Give me 2,000 deutschemarks," he said. Zekaj pleaded that 1,000 marks was all
he had. The masked man took the money and tossed it into his car. Currency covered the
floor of the vehicle. Its glove compartment was so stuffed with bills it would not shut.
'Where's Your NATO?'
Drilon Zeka had never seen so many people in the city center. Thousands teemed in the
streets leading to the Metohija Hotel, where buses, cars and trucks waited, policemen at
the wheels. He stayed close to his family, looking for familiar faces. Men in uniform
smiled cynically and called out, "Where's NATO? Where's your Clinton?"
"We had to choose the bus to Montenegro or to Albania," Higiena said. But she
kept looking around, trying to find her brother. The people in the street had warned that
men were being separated from women and children, a process she understood as a prelude to
mass execution.
"I am very much attached to my brother," she said, and yet somehow they had
become separated. She was on the bus to Montenegro, thinking she would rather die with him
than live without him, when she heard his voice. "I couldn't believe it,"
Higiena said.
The journey to Rozaje, normally a half-hour by car, took eight hours. The road through the
mountain pass was a glut of humanity.
Prishtina, once an epitome of a
bustling city is now a ghost town! (NY Times)
Ordeal for Albanians Still in Kosovo
By DAVID W. CHEN
Last week, Ismer Mjeku managed to call his uncle in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, a few
times to find out just how much life had deteriorated in his hometown.
Food was perilously low, his uncle said. Dozens of people were huddling in tiny apartments
without electricity, afraid to venture outside. And always -- always -- staccato bursts of
gunfire reverberated in the distance.
But on Sunday, Mjeku, a Bronx businessman, lost that tenuous connection to Kosovo, one of
a very few reported with people who are still there. There was no answer at his uncle's
house, no hint of where everyone had gone.
Did Mjeku's uncle move to another hiding spot in the city? Did he join the exodus of
ethnic Albanian refugees streaming out of Kosovo?
"I don't know what's going on," said Mjeku, who publishes the Albanian Yellow
Pages Business Directory. "I can't sleep. I'm not able to do anything right now. It's
like we're in darkness."
For days now there has been a torrent of testimonials about the horrors of ethnic
cleansing from Kosovo's ethnic Albanians who have reached refugee camps in Albania and
Macedonia. But the stories from Mjeku's uncle and a few others are unusual, because there
have been so few accounts from people still in Kosovo since the Serbian government
expelled foreign journalists and aid agencies.
Given their secondhand nature, these stories may well be impossible to confirm
independently. And the voices from Kosovo are likely to grow fainter, because much of the
province's telecommunications network no longer works. At the least, though, these
accounts offer a view on a human scale of the struggles and fears of daily life there.
Parts of Pristina resemble a ghost town, according to several accounts. Some neighborhoods
still have running water, but several buildings have been charred or destroyed. Many
stores owned by Albanians have been looted. Acrid smoke blankets the area. Nonstop gunfire
is the soundtrack to life.
It is a far cry from the days when Pristina was the epitome of a small, bustling Balkan
city of 250,000, with drab high-rise buildings, small houses with red-tiled roofs and
vibrant outdoor cafes.
Now, during daylight hours, a few brave souls, usually older women, occasionally dart
outside, running to the few state-owned stores that remain open. On Friday, cigarettes
were available for the first time in a week. And in the neighborhood where Ibrahim Rugova,
the moderate ethnic Albanian leader, lives, a few children even played ball outside,
according to an Agence France-Presse dispatch with information from Pristina.
Some families are staying behind because they feel that it is the right thing to do, they
have said in their phone calls. Kosovo had two million residents before the war, 90
percent of them ethnic Albanians.
It is the poorest and least developed part of Yugoslavia, but it is also a proud place,
filled with people who have long embraced the struggle for autonomy. "It is dangerous
to stay, but Albanians are making a statement, that this is where they belong," said
one Albanian-American who has been touch in the last few days with relatives in Pristina,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
It is impossible to estimate how many people remain in the city. Over all, about one
million people are believed to be within Kosovo's borders, even though many may be en
route to Albania or Macedonia, or confined to places other than their own homes, said Kris
Janowski, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.
At night now, Pristina is dark and eerily still, say those who have spoken with people
there. There is no electricity after 6 or so, and those in hiding usually remain in the
dark. A few light small candles while closing the curtains and covering the windows with
blankets to avoid detection by the Serbian forces.
"Just imagine that you have a city full of life and lights," said Isuf Hajrizi,
the managing editor of Illyria, an Albanian-American newspaper based in the Bronx, who had
been in telephone communication with people in Pristina. "Then picture that
everything goes dark, with smoke and explosions and flames. It's like Dante's Inferno
within 12 hours."
Hajrizi last spoke to someone in Pristina on Friday, a family that was hiding in a
basement and had a cellular phone. They told him that no one had slept or changed clothes
for days. Food was running out. And they did not know what was happening even a block
away, or what would happen if they heard the dreaded knock on the door from troops.
By several secondhand accounts, the troops who have stumbled on ethnic Albanian families
in Pristina have typically given them as little as five minutes to leave. Some soldiers
have demanded money as well, said Fred Abrahams, the Kosovo researcher at Human Rights
Watch in New York, and some of those who got through by phone.
So those who are trying to remain have been in hiding or have moved from apartment to
apartment, neighborhood to neighborhood. Inevitably, though, more and more people leave.
The wait for a train ticket out of town is now two or three days, the reports say, even
for those forced to leave by the Serbs. And Serbs are departing, too, on buses or trains
destined for Belgrade or other parts of Serbia.
Information about Kosovo's other cities and towns remains even sketchier. Some rural areas
appear to be wastelands, with destroyed crops, burning haystacks and unclaimed livestock
wandering through the fields, said an Albanian-American, speaking on condition of
anonymity, who talked on Saturday with a friend hiding in a rural area.
Sulejman Gashi, a New York-based correspondent for a Kosovo newspaper now being published
in Switzerland, spoke to relatives in Kline, a small town 32 miles from Pristina. They
told him that they had been hiding for a few days last week when they were joined by some
unwanted guests: a group of young Serbian soldiers who said they, too, were afraid of the
war.
So together, these strangers waited, Serbs and ethnic Albanians, united by paralysis,
united by fear. That was the last, anyway, that Gashi had heard; he has since been unable
to contact his relatives.
"The situation is changing from hour to hour, minute to minute," said Elez
Biberaj, chief of the Voice of America's Albanian service, in Washington, who after days
of failure finally made contact yesterday with someone in Pristina -- someone who was
leaving for Macedonia and whom he did not want to name.
"She's under the impression that the police have gotten much nastier, and she sees no
future there," he said. "People are scared to death."
Countless Refugee Accounts Give
Details of Mass Killings (NY Times)
By JOHN KIFNER
KUKES, Albania -- Refugees pouring into Albania from Kosovo are providing detailed
firsthand accounts of mass killings and burned corpses in villages where Serbs were
forcing out ethnic Albanians.
Refugees at widely scattered places and times have given overlapping accounts to foreign
journalists and relief workers of several mass killings, including a massacre on March 26
of about 100 people gathered together in the adjacent villages of Velika Krusa and Mala
Krusa, known to Albanians as Kruse-E-Mahde and Kruse-E-Vogel. The refugees said that the
victims had been killed with automatic weapons and that some bodies were later burned.
The dead will probably number at least in the "high hundreds," said Eugene
O'Sullivan, chief of the observer team from the Organization for Cooperation and Security
in Europe that is monitoring the refugee crisis at the border.
The reports of killing have been so frequent, and so repetitive in their detail, he said,
that the European organization has brought in 60 specially trained investigators to
interview refugees and keep records for possible war-crimes indictments.
The refugee flow continued unabated Monday, with the long miserable lines of sobbing
people stretching some 40 miles back into Serbia.
By 7 p.m. Monday, 22,000 people had crossed the border, in addition to the 188,036 who had
passed over the Morini crossing as of Sunday. Some had been walking for seven days from
the area of Mitrovica, north of Pristina, the depopulated capital.
In the late afternoon, a 10-year-old boy, Dren Caka, who had been shot in the arm, crossed
the border and was being treated at the Doctors of the World tent. He said he had been
hiding with his family and others in the basement of their home in the city of Djakovica
when the Serbs came in and methodically shot several people in the head, then set the
building on fire.
What is striking about the refugees is that they are largely women, children and old men.
The young men, they say, are either hiding in the mountains or have been separated out by
the Serbs and taken away to some unknown fate.
While there is no way to verify independently the accounts of killings -- foreign
journalists have been expelled from Kosovo -- their similarity suggested that they were
credible. Earlier Serbian efforts to remove Muslims from parts of Bosnia were accompanied
by numerous massacres.
"When you keep hearing the same story over and over from different sources, you have
to lend some credence," said Dorian Vienneau, a member of the observer team.
"The sheer volume of reports leaves me to believe this is going on."
Mishar Juareka said that in the village of Balenica, "They surrounded us. They killed
some and captured some and took them away. They killed four children because their
families did not have money to give to the police. We have seen the bodies of the
children. They killed them with knives not guns."
Two bombs were dropped on the village of Negovac, and it was shelled as well, said Skender
Bici, 42. "There were at least 25 people killed from the houses that were
destroyed," he said. "They threw gasoline over the bodies and burned them. There
were other people killed but we only know what we saw in our district.
Afrim Elshani, 32, who said who took four days to drive the 21 miles to the border from
Suva Rica said that last week the police came and started to shoot people. "I know of
10 people who were killed," he said.
A number of accounts have described a massacre in Kruse-E-Vogel and Kruse-E-Madhe which
lie south of the major town of Orahavac.
The BBC has received an amateur videotape said to be have been made in Kruse-E-Madhe,
running 1 minute and 42 seconds, which shows the crumpled bodies of several young men
lying on the ground who appear to have been shot in the head or throat. Two of the bodies
were charred and burned.
A 55-year-old woman, Naxhije Zymi, who said 10 of her brothers had been killed, gave this
account of what had happened in Kruse-E-Vogel:
"On Friday, the police came early in the morning. They executed almost 100 people.
They killed them all, men, women and children. They set a fire and threw the bodies in the
fire and put car tires on the fire."
Her account was similar to others given to foreign reporters and the European observers.
The accounts describe people being gathered near a mosque and being mowed down by gunfire.
Another refugee, Enver Muharremi, told OSCE observers that in Kruse-E-Vogel he had seen a
truck carrying about 20 bodies driven to a nearby river, where the bodies were dumped on a
bank and then set on fire.
Shefret Begaj, 52, who was herded past Kruse-E-Vogel with a group of villagers who had
been gathered in Balenica, said he had seen the Serbs in Kruse-E-Vogel digging what
appeared to be a big grave with a backhoe.
Many of the mass killings, the European security organization's records suggest, occurred
a week ago Friday as the Serbian drive was just beginning, possibly in an effort to sow
terror. In Sopine, in the Suharke district, the observer reports say, about 50 policemen
arrived that day and killed 10 people.
Other killings reported seem more random, with people shooting individuals on the street.
The accounts suggest that private armies were particularly active in the streets of
Djakovica, killing large numbers of young men there.
In one neighborhood of Djakovica, a group of six Serbs wearing masks separated the men
from the women and children, killed 11 people, and burned 50 shops and about 35 houses,
said Mehdi Halilaj, 27. They left the 11 bodies in the street to frighten others, he said.
Over and over the stories spilled out of the refugees, impossible to verify, but each
packed with specific detail. Islam Ponik, 50, for example, said that he had seen 15
people, most of them from the Rexhepi family, burned alive in the village of Celina. Their
shirts were stripped off, he said, gasoline was thrown on them and they were set on fire.
Hajrullah Kabashi, 36, from the village of Ternse, said Serbs killed as many as 47 people
who had tried to stay in their houses, including two of the town's teachers, Refki Rexhaj
and Lulije Gashi.
"Everyone has a story," said O'Sullivan, the observer team's chief.
A clear, well-organized pattern of driving the refugees out is apparent from the accounts
of their flight. People from smaller villages and outlying hamlets are herded into larger
central towns, which become collection points, surrounded by infantry. Often they are
shelled with tanks, mortars and Katyusha rockets along the way.
Eventually, they are put in convoys of farm tractors or cars, sometimes flying white rags,
or forced on foot to the border crossing point near here with police cars or tanks at
their back. Along the way they are systematically robbed of foreign currency, jewelry and
the better cars, and their identity documents and license plates.
The refugees said the violence and humiliation did not end when they had been expelled
from their homes but followed them on their journeys. Older men wearing the traditional
white conical hat of the mountain Albanians were beaten about the head, they said, and
people were forced to make the three-fingered Serbian sign or chant "Serbia,
Serbia."
According to another account, two girls were pulled out of their car at the Serbian border
checkpoint the other night and raped. And others said that Serbs along the way are
plunging long knives into the tires of the refugees' tractors and cars, flattening them
and making the journey even slower and more painful.