[kcc-news] Serb Army Use Albanian Children and Women as Human Shields

[Sokol Rama]

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March 27, 1999


Serb Army Use Albanian Children and Women as Human Shields 



>From Kosova come reports of massacres of ethnic Albanians as armed gangs of
Serbs roam the streets looting, burning and killing. 
There have been reports of killings of Albanians and the burning of their
communities throughout the province. NATO acknowledged the Serbs appeared
to have stepped up ethnic slaughter in the southern province. "There is
mounting evidence from a number of different sources now that terrible
things are happening in Kosova," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said. "They are
simply attacking Albanians for the sake of killing Albanians, including
intellectuals." 



1.Several reports describe and confirm confirm that ethnic Albanians are
being used as human shields. Civilians had been herded into an ammunition
factory and a metal processing plant used as a depot for Serb armoured
vehicles. An estimated 20,000 ethnic Albanian refugees had been moved from
the Drenica region and ordered into an ammunition factory at nearby
Srbica.(Reuters, AP, NY Times, Daily Telegraph, Washington Post etc.)

2.Other reports said that women and children were being held at the
Ferronickel plant at Glogovac, which has been regularly used by the Serbs
as a depot for heavy armoured vehicles. Civilian captives were held there
last spring at the start of the Kosova civil war. To the west of Kosova,
Serbs appeared to have launched a major ethnic cleansing campaign, burning
villages, driving out the women, children and elderly and taking men
prisoner.(NY Times, Daily Telegraph, Reuters, AP, Times etc)

3.Fifty ethnic Albanians were killed in massacres in neighbouring villages,
Suva Reka and Orahovac.( Daily Telegraph, NY Times, KosovaPress, Albanian
TV, etc)

4.Another report told of Serb forces murdering 20 teachers and the director
of a school in front of their pupils before driving the population over the
border.The 20 ethnic Albanian teachers had been executed in the village of
Goden in southern Kosova. Women who escaped and trekked into Albania told
refugee officials that Yugoslav forces separated men from women and
children and killed the men in front of them. (UNHR, Reuters, AP, NY Times,
etc.)

5.A clinic belonging to the Mother Teresa charity, was set on fire by Serb
troops and paramilitary. Human Rights Watch confirmed the  the burning of
the Pristina warehouse of the Mother Theresa Society, the largest local
humanitarian organization in Kosova. The warehouse was filled with food and
medicine and the society had to suspend operations.(HRW, NY Times, Daily
Telegraph etc) 

6.The bodies of Bajram Kelmendi, a human rights lawyer and his two
sons,Kastriot and Kushtrim, were found shot dead at a gas station between
Pristina and Kosovo Polje, southwest of the capital. The lawyer and his
sons were taken from their home early Thursday morning by police, according
to Human Rights Watch. Kelmendi had defended many political prisoners in
Kosova over the last decade and had recently defended the Albanian-language
newspaper Koha Ditore, which was shut down by the police
earlier this week. (NY Times, Times, W Post, Reuters, AP, KosovaPress,
Albanian TV,etc)

7. More than 60 per cent of Podujevo, in northern Kosova, was razed after
being hit by Yugoslav artillery fire. (The Times)

8.Serb MiG 29s targeted civilian areas in the surrounding Llap region. To
the south the town of Suva Reka was being purged of Albanians, their houses
left in flames. 

9. A quarter in the old town of Gjakova (an ancient town near the border
with Albania that is almost 100 percent ethnic Albanian) was set ablaze,
while reports of men being segregated and detained are too many to list.
(NY Times, W Post, Reuters, AP, KosovaPress, etc.) Serb paramilitary gangs
had slaughtered several hundred ethnic Albanians in the  town after NATO
bombed a local barracks. "They're telling us that about 70 bodies were
found in just two houses, but hundreds were killed all over town," Kosova
Albanian sources in touch with the KLA guerrillas told Reuters. 

10. Two Yugoslav air force MiG-29s hit the Kosova village of Berisha on
Saturday.

11.In Mitrovica, 40 km (25 miles) north of Pristina, irregulars in a
passing car shot dead an ethnic Albanian man, and a woman was killed when a
grenade was lobbed into her garden.






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