Yugoslav troops and Serb paramilitary units are revenging on innocent civilian Albanians

March 26, 1999 1:54 PM ET

As NATO began a third day of air attacks on Yugoslavia, there were reports of Yugoslav troops and Serb paramilitary units sweeping through villages in Kosova, killing innocent civilian Albanians and causing widespread destruction of their properties.. Yugoslav authorities have expelled journalists and diplomatic observers from several NATO member countries, but reports of massacres and widespread destruction emerged from other sources.

1. CNN and BBC report that the Serbian forces are shelling indiscriminately, especially in the northern part of Kosova. In the Drenica region, we have reports that some 20,000 civilians are encircled by tanks and Serbian forces, in the northern village of Qirez.

2. British Defense Minister George Robertson told reporters in London today that two villages across the border in Albania had been shelled by Yugoslav forces. Other ethnic Albanian villages in Kosova had been razed as well, he said.

3.U.S. intelligence officials say Serb forces are driving ethnic Albanians out of villages and rounding up prominent civilians while international observers are gone. In the provincial capital of Pristina, Veton Surroi - one of the four Kosovar Albanian signers of the peace accords - has gone into hiding. At his offices - the province's best known daily, Koha Ditore, the doorman was shot dead,

4.Human rights groups said several ethnic Albanian community leaders have been kidnapped in Kosova, and some have been killed. "The war in Kosova has now entered a new phase," said James Hooper, of the Balkan Action Council in the United States. "Serbian forces have begun to abduct and execute the professionals, the political leaders and others in a number of places throughout Kosova."

5.The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday that Yugoslav troops reportedly killed 20 civilians in Goden - a town in southwestern Kosova. The UNHCR, citing witnesses' accounts, said Serbian forces torched village homes, separated men from their families and executed 20 of them. The accounts came from 174 women and children who crossed into northern Albania, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said in Geneva. "They alleged 20 of them (the men) were executed and they actually saw the bodies," Janowski said.

6.The UNHCR commission estimates about 450,000 people have fled Kosova in more than a year of fighting - roughly 25 percent of the province's pre-conflict population, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said Friday.

7. Reuters referring to accounts of Albanian refugees displaced by force, reports that in the northern Kosova town of Mitrovica,ethnic Albanian shops and business premises had been burned by Serbian irregulars after NATO began bombing on Wednesday. "In one part of town, everything is burnt. It was like in a film," said one of the refugees. "You could see coming what is happening now in Kosova," William Walker, the head of the withdrawn international truce monitoring force for Kosovo. "It's horrible. It's about as brazen an attack on the civilian population as I've ever witnessed."

8. Reuters reports that a prominent Kosova Albanian lawyer and his two sons were shot dead by Serb police and dumped in the street in the provincial capital Pristina, according to a report from Kosovo Albanian sources. Bajram Kelmendi and his sons, aged 16 and 26, were taken by police from their home on the first night of NATO air strikes, the sources said, and the women of the family were told they would never see the men again. When Kelmendi's wife asked police the following day where her husband and sons were, she was told: "Go and ask NATO. Go look for them there." The bodies were subsequently found in a city street, the sources said. In Kosovska Mitrovica in the north, prominent unionist Agim Hajrizi was also murdered, the same sources said.

9.Kosovapress news agency reports that 30 ethnic Albanian civilians were executed and their houses burned down in Suva Reka on Thursday and Friday. The victims in the town, which is southwest of the provincial capital Pristina, included women, children and elderly people as well men, the agency said.

10. A popular cafe in the centre of Pristina was burned in a fire that swept through a restaurant district. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but the Tiffany's cafe was popular with international journalists, most of whom were ordered to leave the country on Thursday.

11.Eyewitnesses told Reuters masked paramilitaries swept the western town of Djakovica overnight, killing at least two people, one at his home which they then set alight. Buildings were burning near the post office in the centre of Djakovica on Friday morning. Paramilitary and military forces, including some units of local police in masks, also burned shops in a district known locally as Qarshia e Vogel. "People are shut up in the houses. They can't get out because they might be shot dead as happened two days ago and last night," a local aid worker told Reuters from Djakovica.

12.In another western Kosovo town, Pec, residents said that paramilitary and military forces killed a man overnight and looted several shops.

13.Paramilitary and military forces were also active in the village of Obranca, near Podujeva, northeast of the provincial capital Pristina. Residents there said 10 people had been beaten up in raids on homes. An eyewitness in Pristina said police emptied a sports store in the centre just after midnight. A supermarket was also looted.

14. The number of ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosova reached 2,370 people in Turkey on Friday. Nearly 350 Kosova residents arrived in four busses on Friday morning alone. Most of the refugees are women and children. Local authorities believe the numbers will keep growing.

To bomb or not to bomb? That isn't the question. Life should be so simple; it's not.

The bombing campaign against Milosevic's massive military forces was inevitable, but it should have been carried out in 1995 at the end of the Bosnian War, in which 250,000 Bosnian civilians perished. The war criminals involved are now, many of them, busily at work in Kosova. They were never arrested even though that was a part of the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995. The Albanian "problem" was intentionally created by the London Conference of 1912-13 and not the Battle of 1389 as Serb propaganda leads us to believe. At that time, with the break-up of the Ottoman empire, the Western powers decided to divide the eight million impoverished and unarmed Albanians into four countries so the would remain geo-politically powerless. Europe has overlooked their existence ever since---even during the Dayton Peace plan, which was supposed to included a follow-up to the Kosova "problem," but didn't. Even four weeks ago, at the collapse of the first set of "peace talks" in France would have been a much more advantageous time to strike. In the past four weeks, he has done much to prepare for this type of assault. And now Milosevic is using this bombing period to consolidate Serb solidarity in Serbia and to declare a military state of emergency in the more democratic Republic of Montenegro. He is also using the time and the news blackout to round up the villagers and to track down Albanian leadership in their homes, causing widespread panic throughout Kosova.

Furthermore he has been able, within the space of only two days, to incite a certain amount of panic in neighboring Albania and Macedonia, two brand new and highly unstable "democracies."

The reason for this rapid escalation, in which he has not even had to use his air defense system? Milosevic knows the West will not commit the necessary ground troops that would provide protection for the unarmed civilians and the support for this bombing campaign.History shows many scenarios in which it is possible to wait out bombing raids. The London Blitzkrieg. The Budapest Blitzkrieg.

Then super-liberals and super-conservatives will voice a negative reaction that will rise to the surface, and whatever forceful momentum had been acquired to initiate the campaign will evaporate. That is what he is counting on.

Our "sound bite" media will seek out tiny cracks in the NATO alliance as it has already and we, the listening public, will become saturated with these differences. The media has already forgotten the Rambouillet peace plan of four weeks ago, which essentially is supposed to be the focus of this action. The peace plan would have restored to Kosova some measure of safety, human rights, and basic civil protection, all things they have been without for the past ten years.

KOSOVO HUMANITARIAN DISASTER ALERT
Humanitarian Crisis Mounts: Civilians In Greater Danger Than At Any Time

We the undersigned organizations wish to underscore our grave concern for the safety of Kosovo's civilians. In particular we are alarmed by:

· the escalation of systematic, execution-style killings of Kosovar civilians;

· the massive build-up and attacks by Serbian military and security forces both in and near Kosovo;

· a new climate of fear in cities and towns, created by wanton bombings, shootings, beatings, detentions and arrests;

· the stepped-up policy of ethnic cleansing, manifested by the increased shelling, looting and burning of villages in northern and central Kosovo;

· the forced evacuation from their homes and farms of tens of thousands more Kosovars who now are urgently seeking shelter both in cities and towns already packed with displaced persons, and in unprotected, snow-covered forests and mountains;

· the rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in cities such as Pristina caused by the overwhelming influx of refugees and the rising tide of violence;

· the danger of potential attacks by Serbian forces on cities that would result in horrific carnage and tremendous loss of life;

· the latest crackdown on independent media in Kosovo and Belgrade, including the shutdown of independent Radio B92, and the threatened closing of the daily Koha Ditore.

· the near-total and possibly prolonged absence of international relief organizations that can no longer alleviate the mounting humanitarian crisis;

· police harassment of international and local humanitarian organizations;

· security forces blocking humanitarian organizations’ access to roads and displaced civilians in need;

· the imminent danger of violent reprisals against civilians, which have been threatened by security forces.

As a result of these circumstances, and following the evacuation of OSCE monitors and international humanitarian organizations from Kosovo, humanitarian operations in Kosovo have come to a standstill:

· Doctors of the World reports that, with the departure of the UNHCR and the Danish Refugee Council, daily food distribution via UN-protected convoys is no longer possible;

· International Orthodox Christian Charities reports that food distribution in and around Decani and Pec is no longer possible;

· One local employee of the IRC was killed and two more injured in a bomb explosion on March 22 in Pristina. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) withdrew its foreign staff after determining it had little aid left to deliver and its access to the field had been severely hampered.

· Catholic Relief Services (CRS) reports that CRS warehouse workers were prevented by the police from going to the warehouse in Lebane on 22 March. The warehouse was broken into later that evening. The events of the past two days have led to a full evacuation of CRS international staff;

· As of today, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders constitute the only foreign humanitarian presence left in Kosovo.

We urge the international community to address the urgent need for protection of civilians now facing dire conditions and imminent danger throughout Kosovo.

Coalition for International Justice Doctors of the World Human Rights Watch

International Crisis GroupA
International League for Human Rights
Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders
Physicians for Human Rights

KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS FLASH #3 March 26, 1999

Today, at 4:00 p.m. local Yugoslav time, a Dutch journalist with Net 5 Television, Nynke Laporte, and her Hungarian cameraman, Lajos Galanos, were released from a Novi Sad prison, where they had been held since yesterday afternoon on charges of spying. They are currently (5:00 local time) being deported out of the country through the Hungarian border. Police arrested Ms. Laporte and Mr. Galanos yesterday in Novi Sad, where they were trying to film damage from Nato air raids. A crowd of civilians harassed the journalists and beat Mr. Galanos, although not seriously. They spent the night in a 5 degree Celsius cell in T-shirts before being released this morning, with help from the Greek embassy in Belgrade.

Human Rights Watch

KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS FLASH #4 March 26, 1999

The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), the most reliable domestic human rights monitoring group in Yugoslavia, reported today that the bodies of Bajram Kelmendi, an Albanian human rights lawyer, and his two sons, Kastriot and Kushtrim, have been found shot dead at a gas station between Pristina and Kosovo Polje, southwest of the capital. According to the HLC, a police investigation is under way. Mr. Kelmendi and his sons were taken from their home early in the morning of March 25 by the Serbian police, who beat Mr. Kelmendi in front of his family (see HRW flash #1). The police refused to give Kelmendi's wife, Nekibe, also a human rights lawyer, information on their whereabouts, telling her to "ask NATO." Mr. Kelmendi was an active human rights lawyer who had defended many political prisoners in Kosovo over the past decade. He had recently defended the Albanian-language newspaper Koha Ditore, which was closed by the police two days ago.

HLC Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash # 3 26 March 1999

NATO launches 1st daylight attack against Yugoslavia (CNN)

March 26, 1999

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- NATO fired a cruise missile from a warship in the Adriatic Sea Friday, marking the first daytime operation in NATO's campaign against Serb military targets in Yugoslavia.

CNN Correspondent Martin Savidge reported the launch of a U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missile from a U.S. Navy vessel about 2:20 p.m. (8:20 a.m. EST/1320 GMT) in the third round of attacks.

Earlier Friday, NATO officials said alliance warplanes would continue to destroy the Yugoslav armed forces' integrated air-defense system.

After two rounds of NATO bombings of Serbian military targets in Yugoslavia, a NATO spokesman in Brussels said the air campaign against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was never designed to last "only for one or two days".

"He will have to decide how much pain he is willing to suffer," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said at a news conference.

Fifty targets hit

British Air Commodore David Wilby told journalists that in the first two waves of NATO bombings 50 Serbian military targets were hit.

Those included air defense facilities in Novi Sad and Batajnica in Serbia and Podgorica in Montenegro. The republics of Serbia, where Kosovo province is located, and Montenegro are what remain of the former Yugoslavia.

"On the operational front, we continue our attacks on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's air defense system," Wilby said, adding that the missions flown so far had been successful.

Soon to target ground troops

NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark said Friday that the alliance so far had only targeted Serb military facilities but would launch air attacks against Yugoslav troops soon, in line with NATO battle plans.

However, Clark declined to elaborate on what exactly that would involve or when it would happen.

If Milosevic does not stop attacks on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, then, "I assume that we will get additional military objectives or we will continue to work," he told CNN.

U.S. President Bill Clinton on Friday made a direct appeal to the Serb people.

In a taped speech sent out via satellite -- and also posted on the Web site of WORLDNET, the U.S. Information Agency's global information network -- Clinton told Serbs that NATO and the United States had "no quarrel" with the people of Serbia.

But he added that Milosevic had "diminished your country's standing in the world."

"I call on all Serbs and all people of good will to join us to seek an end to the needless and avoidable conflict," Clinton said in his address.

Russia expels NATO representatives NATO member Britain on Friday vowed to stop "Milosevic's murder machine" unless the Serb president ended his crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

But Russia, which has repeatedly protested any military action over Kosovo, put its foot down Friday. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said NATO representatives in Moscow were told to leave the country.

China -- like Russia a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and also opposed to the strikes -- again called for an immediate end to the NATO airstrikes, as did Greece.

NATO member Italy called for a brief and focused campaign by the alliance.

Reprisals feared

The U.N. refugee agency said Friday it feared more Serb reprisals against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority now that international observers and relief workers have left.

"With only a handful of independent observers left on the ground, we are extremely worried about the plight of Kosovo's civilian population, which has already been through a terrible ordeal," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said in Geneva.

NATO: Yugo ground troops may be targeted

Clark says an objective of the NATO mission is to destroy Yugoslavia's military capability unless Milosevic agrees to peace initiatives March 26, 1999 Web posted at: 9:50 a.m. EST (1450 GMT)

NATO facing little resistance

MONS, Belgium (CNN) -- With a third day of airstrikes against Yugoslav air defenses set to begin, NATO's military leader told CNN on Friday that the long-range attack strategy also targets Yugoslav ground troops.

"We will do this ... as rapidly as we can," NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark said without giving a specific timetable. "It's part of the campaign plan," the U.S. general said.

NATO, he said, seeks to destroy the Yugoslav military unless President Slobodan Milosevic ends his offensive in Kosovo and agrees to a peace plan for that Serbian province.

Clark said that the targeting of Yugoslavia's air defenses was not only to protect NATO aircraft, but also a "preparatory step" before going after Milosevic's ground forces.

"It was always understood, from the outset, that there was no way we were going to stop these (Serb) paramilitary forces who were going in and murdering civilians in these (Kosovo) villages," Clark said in an interview in Mons, Belgium, where NATO's military headquarters is located.

"What we're going to do is act to degrade his command and control over the heavy military forces and the uniformed police forces," he said. "I can't predict what day it's going to be done."

NATO had not lost any aircraft since the strikes were launched on Wednesday, denying Yugoslav reports overnight that three planes had been shot down.

NATO pilots have not met heavy resistance, although Yugoslavia has used anti-aircraft radar and has launched some surface-to-air missiles at NATO planes. "I can't tell you why they haven't launched more," he said.

There were "accurate" reports, verified by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitors, of Albanian villages across the border from Kosovo being shelled by Yugoslav forces.

Clark said such firing had occurred before. "This will be something which the Serbs will see what they can get away with provided they think there are targets across the border in Albania."

It "wouldn't be surprising," he added, if Serbian forces even crossed the border into Albanian on raiding missions.

Clark, 54, is a Rhodes scholar who graduated in 1966 at the top of his class at the U.S. Military Academy. At Oxford University in England he studied politics, philosophy and economics.

The Little Rock, Arkansas, native has been the supreme U.S. and NATO commander in Europe since July 1997, moving there after commanding the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, where he was responsible for U.S. security policy in Latin America.

Albanians allege Kosova massacre (CNN)

Albanian journalists are reporting renewed and intensified attacks against Kosova Albanians by Yugoslav forces as the Nato air strikes continued into a second night.

The unconfirmed reports, said that there had been a massacre of 20 civilians in the the village of Rahovec in central Kosova . The group rounded up for execution reportedly included "intellectuals", namely teachers, and the killings were carried out by Serb paramilitary police before military units pounded the village with shells.

Kosova Albanians say there has been heavy fighting west of Pristina and that 20,000 civilians were surrounded by tanks in the northern village of Qirez.

But Serbian reports say the separatist Kosova Liberation Army has been using the cover of Nato strikes to launch attacks on Serbian positions.

The reports came as Nato intensified its attacks on Yugoslav targets and warned President Slobodan Milosevic of continued air strikes, involving warplanes and Cruise missiles, unless he agreed to a deal over autonomy for Kosova.

Speaking on Albanian television, Information Minister Musa Ulqini said the latest killings, in the villages of Goden and Zylfaj, near Dobrune on the Kosova-Albanian border, were a "terrible massacre".

The minister said that 176 refugees had fled to Albania, including 96 children.

"These two villages no longer exist, because they have been razed to the ground by artillery shells," he said.

There has been no independent confirmation of the attacks.

"Foreign correspondents in Macedonia are unable to substantiate the reports as access to Kosova is now banned.

They report that the KLA has reported similar alleged alleged massacres before and have sometimes exaggerated the facts.

But they add that the tone adopted by pro-Kosova journalists reporting the incidents may suggest that there is some truth to the allegations.

Speaking to the BBC World Service's The World Today programme, Brussels-based Albanian journalist Ekrem Krasnici said that there had been numerous reports of fresh Serb offensives flooding from the province since the Nato air strikes began.

"(The attacks) are just like 12 months ago," he said. "There is clearly an uncontrolled situation in the majority of the villages and cities in Kosova."

NATO Determined to Force Milosevic to Accept Peace Plan.

BONN, March 26 (Itar-Tass) - The North Atlantic Alliance is determined to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to stop violence in Kosovo and to accept the plan of a peaceful settlement in that area, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. He took part in the summit conference of the European Union, held in Berlin.

Addressing British troops taking part in the operation through the BFBS broadcasting station of the British troops in Germany, Blair admitted that it was not an easy thing for him to make a decision on Britain's joining the U.N. and NATO operation against Belgrade. He said, however, that it was necessary to do, in order to "avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo." Blair said that the NATO operation was directed not against the Serb nation, but against the policy pursued by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo.