[kcc-news] Yugoslav troops and Serb paramilitary units are revenging on innocent civilian Albanians

[Sokol Rama]

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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. 



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