[ALBSA-Info] Two Killed on Macedonian Border

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Two Killed on Macedonian Border

By KONSTANTIN TESTORIDES

  
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - An ethnic Albanian rebellion in Macedonia 
intensified Sunday, with police saying government troops were battling 
hundreds of guerrillas in two border villages and on rugged mountain slopes. 

Three Macedonian army soldiers were killed, including two whose vehicle hit a 
land mine near the village of Tanusevci, a stronghold of the insurgents 20 
miles north of the capital, Skopje. The third died within hours at a nearby 
location, hit by sniper fire. 

Despite international and Macedonian efforts to contain the violence, the 
fighting has spread to the village of Malina, just east of Tanusevci, and to 
nearby Mt. Kodra Pura, according to a police officer who spoke on condition 
of anonymity. About 200 rebels were battling government troops, he said. 

Macedonian police closed down both border crossings to Kosovo, a province of 
Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic. 

``It's a real war,'' said Hamdi Hasani, mayor of the Kosovo border village of 
Debele, very near Tanusevci. He said sporadic exchanges of gunfire increased 
by late morning into prolonged firefights. He said heavy weapons were being 
used, with some rounds falling inside Kosovo. 

The latest upsurge of fighting around Kosovo has raised fears of another 
major crisis that could threaten the whole region, less than two years after 
NATO and the United Nations moved into Kosovo. 

The fighting could be an attempt to provoke Macedonian troops into a massive 
response that would potentially claim innocent lives of ethnic Albanian 
villagers in the region. The guerrillas might be hoping that could radicalize 
Macedonia's ethnic Albanians, who make up nearly 25 percent of the over 
population of two million and help their cause. 

Urging government restraint, the Skopje-based mission of the Organization for 
Security and Cooperation in Europe, expressed the hope that ``the inevitable 
and justified response to this provocation will be adequate and not excessive 
and possibly coordinated'' with the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo. 

Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski held an emergency meeting with defense 
officials and several ambassadors of NATO countries. The president's office 
said U.S. Ambassador Michael Eikin and Mark Dickenson, his British 
counterpart, were among those attending. 

Sporadic gunfire and shelling - mortar or artillery rounds - started shortly 
before noon, according to Capt. Marcus Evans, an American member of the 
NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force who was observing the fighting from 
Debele. 

A dozen U.S. Army humvees crowding Debele streets attested to the increased 
American observer presence in the village. Watching from the air were two 
Blackhawk helicopters, along with an unmanned drone spy plane. 

Two plumes of smoke could be seen from Debele rising from Tanusevci. 

``We are bracing ourselves for a new flood of refugees,'' said Hasani, the 
Debele mayor, alluding to the spread of fighting to the second village. 
Hundreds of ethnic Albanians from the Tanusevci region fled over to Kosovo 
last week, when violence first intensified. 

Ethnic Albanian insurgents have launched twin offensives south of Kosovo into 
Macedonia, and east of Kosovo into a buffer zone with Serbia. The two 
conflicts both appear to be sparked by insurgents in heavily ethnic Albanian 
areas in apparent hopes of joining the areas with Kosovo as part their 
ultimate goal of independence. Fighters in both conflicts are thought to be 
aided from Kosovo. 

Reflecting that three-way linkage, Kosovo's NATO and United Nations heads - 
Lt. Gen. Carlo Cabigiosu and Hans Haekkerup - arrived in Skopje and went into 
an emergency meeting with top government officials.