Serb forces yesterday captured a key Albanian stronghold in western Kosovo after a three-week siege, continuing a massive offensive against separatists, sources close to the Serb police said.
Hundreds of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters and civilians had been in Junik, on the border with Albania, since Serb forces surrounded it on July 26th.
Ethnic Albanian sources said Serbs used helicopters and heavy artillery to pound the village since the start of the siege.
Serb authorities accused the KLA of launching attacks from the village, claiming they had not retaliated because of the presence of civilians.
Ethnic Albanians had been fleeing from the region since Saturday after Serb forces captured the neighbouring village of Voksa, the sources said.
In a massive offensive over the past few weeks, Serb forces have pushed the KLA out of many areas it once controlled, forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee. Residents in the western town of Pec, 20 kilometres north of Junik, said they could hear the sound of explosions early yesterday from three villages - Lodja, Rausic and Grabovac - southeast of the town. Clouds of smoke could be seen rising from the villages.
The party of the moderate Kosovo Albanian leader, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, who heads the Kosovo Democratic League, confirmed their reports.
The southern Serbian province has been torn by unrest since Serb forces first began an offensive in late February to crush separatists. The offensive was stepped up three weeks ago.
Kosovo, which has a 90 per cent ethnic Albanian majority, was stripped of its autonomous status by Belgrade in 1989.
In Belgrade, the Tanjug news agency said a Yugoslav army lieutenant and a conscript were killed yesterday trying to prevent KLA members fleeing across the border into neighbouring Albania.
Meanwhile, the ethnic Albanian Human Rights Committee said in Pristina that 583 ethnic Albanians, mainly civilians, had died in the fighting since February, when President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia first sent police and army units to crush the independence drive.