The British government seized on evidence yesterday that young ethnic Albanian women were being herded into an army camp in Kosovo and subjected to systematic rape by Serbian security forces. Mr Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, accused the Serbs of stepping up their "brutal atrocities" by separating women from their families as they fled Kosovo and forcing them to endure rape at the camp in the village of Djakovica, close to the border with Albania.
Women who have made it across the border have given harrowing accounts of their ordeal to aid workers, Mr Cook told the daily briefing at the Ministry of Defence. "The story has come forward from a number of women and, sadly, I have to say it does seem to have the ring of corroboration."
Aid agencies agreed that Serb forces had resorted to rape as a tactic during the expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that a 22-year-old woman was shot dead on Monday night as she ran from a Serb soldier who had singled her out as her family fled Kosovo.
UNHCR said it had no evidence, however, of a rape camp at Djakovica and it suggested that NATO could have compiled details only from its spy satellites. One observer, who wanted to remain anonymous, wondered why Mr Cook had raised the issue only a day after NATO attacked a train in Serbia, killing 10 civilians. NATO was deeply embarrassed by the bombing, which handed a propaganda victory to the Serb authorities, and yesterday the alliance set up an inquiry to find out what had gone wrong.
In his briefing about the alleged rape camp, Mr Cook accused Serbs of completing "the pattern of brutality of Milosevic's forces in Bosnia", where at least 60,000 women - overwhelmingly Muslim - were systematically raped. However, there are striking differences between the two wars.
Serb operations in Kosovo are being carried out in the main by regular Yugoslav army troops, unlike the paramilitary forces that were largely responsible for the rapes in Bosnia. Many of the rape camps in Bosnia were set up with the help of local Serb militia groups, and Muslim women were often raped by their neighbours.
However, there was unanimous agreement yesterday that the spectre of widespread rape had returned to the Balkans. Serb forces pick off young women as a way of asserting their power and of attacking the ethnic Albanian population by impregnating women with a Serbian child.
International health organisations are so concerned by the growing reports of rape in Kosovo that the International Society for Health and Human Rights is to hold a meeting on the issue in Austria on Friday.
Rachel Donnelly adds: In a Commons statement yesterday, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, said 500,000 ethnic Albanians had now fled or been driven out of Kosovo as part of President Slobodan Milosevic's policy of ethnic cleansing. He announced the deployment of "substantial" reinforcements of British troops on the ground in Greece and Macedonia from where they will be in a position to implement a possible peace settlement in Kosovo.
About 1,800 troops will be sent from their bases in Britain and Germany within days and will arrive in a month's time, increasing the British army contingent in the Balkans to over 6,300.