Fight intensifies over Serb town

Ethnic Albanian rebels used the buffer zone as a safe haven

ORAOVICA, Yugoslavia -- Yugoslav government forces have given villagers a deadline to leave as it attempts to flush ethnic Albanian rebels from southern Serbia, a report says.

Yugoslav army and Serbian police have been in house-to-house fighting with ethnic Albanians in and around Oraovica just outside a volatile buffer zone between Kosovo and the rest of southern Serbia.

An estimated 900 villagers have already fled their homes since Monday, Astrid Van Genderen Stort, a United Nations refugee agency spokeswoman in Kosovo said.

Troops called a halt to heavy machine-gun firing to allow people living in Oraovica to leave before a planned resumption to regain the village, the Associated Press said.

Fighting has raged in the area since the weekend and there are fears it will intensify after NATO handed over the final 20 percent of territory in the buffer zone to Yugoslav security forces on Monday.

Five ethnic Albanian rebels have been killed since Monday, a rebel spokesman called Commander Profi, told AP.

The five kilometre wide (three mile wide) area, which had previously separated NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo from the rest of Serbia, is a potentially volatile area because it is home to mainly ethnic Albanians.

It was also used as a safe haven by ethnic Albanian rebels after its creation in 1999 following NATO's bombing campaign.

The rebels seized Oraovica, one mile north of the town of Presevo, and dug in over the weekend but were circled by Serb troops on Monday who then moved gradually into the village.

NATO reduces buffer zone
April 10, 2001
Peacekeepers kill Serb
May 7, 2001

NATO in Kosovo
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

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