Refugee tide resumes as Albanians flee homes

TABANOVCE (MACEDONIA), MAY 26. Thousands of dirty, hungry and weary ethnic Albanians who have spent three weeks living in cellars in northern Macedonian villages began to flee their homes on Friday.

The exodus came as the Macedonian Government intensified artillery and helicopter attacks, promising a policy of ``no mercy'' to ethnic Albanian rebels. More than 1,000 men, women and children from the battered village of Vaksince arrived on Friday near a railway station after walking terrified for hours through the fields. As a storm broke above their heads, they were separated into groups of men and women by Macedonian special police wearing bullet-proof jackets.

The men, who had several days' stubble on their unwashed faces, told of desperate weeks huddled together in basements as shells and mortars crashed into their village. ``We didn't know anything about what was happening outside our cellar,'' said Hasan, a 50- year-old farmer. ``For the last two weeks we have been surviving on a little flour each day.''

Fifty yards away women wearing traditional head- scarves sat with babies and young children as the downpour began. One held a large, dirty blanket over her children to try to shield them. Later they were loaded on to buses and taken to the regional capital, Kumanovo, where they were given mineral water and food. As the buses pulled out of the station husbands and wives waved desperately to each other and children cried.

The police assured the men that they would not be harmed, but few ethnic Albanians trust the promises of what they see as a hostile government. ``There is nothing left of our village now,'' one man said sadly. ``We didn't want to leave, we had to leave everything behind - our cattle, our parents and our homes. But the shelling was so bad we had no choice.'' The military hardware used with punishing effect against the villages was in action once again on Friday. Russian-built helicopters swooped low over cornfields dotted with poppies, firing salvoes of rockets. Heavy mortar positions lobbed shells across the main regional railway line into houses in the villages. From closer in, tanks pounded individual houses. The attacks made an incongruous impression in a country which to all appearances is settling into a lazy Balkan summer. - FTelegraph Group Limited, London, 2001.

Rebel leader surrenders

AP reports from Pristina:

A top commander of ethnic Albanian rebels in southern Serbia has surrendered to NATO-led peacekeepers and handed over a large cache of weapons, U.S. military officials said today.

Shefket Musliu surrendered yesterday while returning from the funeral of another rebel commander, Ridvan Qazimi, who was killed on Thursday by Yugoslav troops. Musliu and two top associates were released after they promised not to fight anymore, said a statement from the U.S. peacekeepers in Kosovo.

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