Serbs flee mob violence

By KIM SENGUPTA in Pristina

Five years of efforts at reconciliation between Albanians and Serbs have been destroyed in three days of murderous violence in Kosovo.

By yesterday, as Nato reinforcements poured in, the Serbian population had been "cleansed" from their enclaves in the former Yugoslav province, and were huddled into refugee camps in military barracks.

The first of some 2000 Nato reinforcements shuttled into Kosovo's Slatina airport throughout the day to beef up the 18,000-strong multinational peacekeeping force.

Also yesterday came signs of a Serbian backlash within Kosovo, with reports of Albanian homes being burned in the north by mobs reinforced from across the border.

Evidence of further lawlessness came with attacks on multinational peacekeepers from both sides, mostly by Albanians who, not so long ago, were hailing Nato as their liberators.

Michael McClellan, of the United States office in Pristina, said: "American troops were attacked by Albanians - this has never been heard of before."

The death toll so far is 31, with more than 600 reported injured, 100 of these being policemen and 60 of them members of the international Kosovo Force.

Around 130 properties were ransacked, and 20 churches went up in flames.

Serbian leader Vojislav Kostunica, who will soon face internal elections that will have a fiercely nationalist tinge, expressed his disquiet at the failure to protect Kosovo's 100,000 remaining Serbs.

The full extent of the Serbian internal exodus is now clear. They have either fled, or been evacuated from towns such as Obelic, Staro Gradsko and Svinjare.

At Svinjare, Albanian mobs burned the empty homes and drove cattle and pigs into the flames. Nuns at an isolated monastery in Devic, in the north, were flown out by Nato helicopters as a mob was closing in.

At Lipljan, peacekeepers were overseeing the evacuation of 200 children and elderly people.

The rest of the population had taken refuge in a Finnish peacekeeping base, as the troops drove back Albanian youths attempting to attack the local church.

- INDEPENDENT