[kcc-news] !! Serbs Massacre 46 Albanians in Kosova !!

[Mentor Cana]

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Dozens Found Massacred in Kosovo

By Melissa Eddy
Associated Press Writer 
Saturday, January 16, 1999; 9:42 a.m. EST

RACAK, Yugoslavia (AP) -- The bodies of dozens of men were found scattered 
on a hillside and in ravines in southern Kosovo today, many of them 
mutilated, the day after a fierce attack by Serb forces on ethnic Albanian 
villages. Reporters counted at least 35 bodies.

Reporters and international verifiers were prevented on Friday from reaching 
the besieged area around the village of Racak, where the Kosovo Liberation 
Army rebels said at least 46 were killed, including eight guerrillas.

Some had their eyes gouged out or heads smashed in, and one man lay 
decapitated in the courtyard of his compound. All wore civilian clothing, 
and many were older men. Verifiers said many had been shot at close range.

International monitors initially counted at least 28 bodies heaped together 
near the crest of a hill, and ethnic Albanians told of many others nearby.

It was the worst killing spree since an October truce largely halted more 
than seven months of combat in the separatist province in Serbia, and 
perhaps the most savage of the nearly yearlong conflict.

The informal cease-fire, which international officials have insisted is 
still largely intact, is now in the most danger yet of collapsing into a 
resumption of the province-wide fighting that devastated Kosovo in 1998. The 
KLA has said it would still honor the cease-fire except to defend ethnic 
Albanians, but has been rearming and preparing for a return to war.

The ethnic Albanians' Kosovo Information Center reported that government 
forces were using heavy artillery and tanks today in a new offensive against 
three rebel-held villages in western Kosovo.

The report, which could not immediately be confirmed, said rebels were 
providing ``strong resistance'' in an area south of Decani, where a British 
verifier was shot and wounded the previous day in

the first violence involving an injury to a monitor.

The U.S. chief of the monitoring mission run by the Organization for 
Security and Cooperation in Europe was visibly shaken after touring the site 
around Racak today. William Walker called it ``a horrendous and very, very 
serious event.''

``It's hard to find words when I see bodies like this, shot 
execution-style,'' said the diplomat, who heads the three-month-old Kosovo 
Verification Mission. ``It looks like it was done by people who have no 
value for human life.''

Walker said he would hold a news conference later today in Kosovo's capital, 
Pristina, once he had more information and a chance to collect his thoughts. 
Verifiers said it may take days to learn what happened and compile the final 
death toll.

The wailing of women in the village of Racak, which was evacuated under 
fierce shelling and tank fire on Friday, could be heard today as they 
learned of the men's fate.

Villagers said Serb police had separated men from their families and led 
them toward the local police station. They later turned and herded them up 
the hill, where they killed them, the residents said.

Bodies lay where they apparently were slain, along cowpaths and in deep, 
hilly ravines.

The Serb Media Center had reported on Friday that at least 15 KLA fighters 
were killed in the attack on three villages, including Racak, outside 
Stimlje, about 15 miles south of Pristina. It said it was a crackdown on the 
KLA in response to its attacks on police.

Yugoslav tanks and troops were part of the attack, pounding the area before 
fighting abated Friday afternoon.

Verifiers and journalists heard villagers tell of a grisly massacre.

An ethnic Albanian man who gave his name only as Raim said he was told Serb 
police had barged into his family compound and attacked and killed his 
father and two brothers.

``Yesterday early in the morning, police came with very heavy machine guns 
together with the army,'' he said. ``They entered the village with infantry. 

Half of the people they arrested and beat up. The rest you can see here,'' 
he said pointing to the heap of bodies.


``We don't know what we are going to do,'' he said, sitting on a stump with 
his head in his hands, holding on his knees a rifle with ``UCK'' -- the 
Albanian-language acronym for the KLA -- burned into the wooden butt.

He said he was in the hills at the time of the attack and only learned of it 
today.

The death toll apparently is the highest in a single attack since the Oct. 
12 agreement brokered by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke.

Last month, army border guards killed 36 KLA fighters as they tried to 
smuggle weapons in from neighboring Albania.

As many as 2,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed since 
Milosevic launched an offensive last February to try to crush separatist 
militants and reinforce government control over the Albanian-majority 
province in Serbia, the larger republic in Yugoslavia.

The Serb Media Center said today that two ethnic Albanians were shot and 
killed Friday as they drove near Pristina, and dozens of bullet casings of 
the type used by rebels were found at the scene. The KLA has acknowledged 
targeting ethnic Albanians loyal to Serb authorities in its independence 
campaign.

© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press


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