Peacekeepers in Kosovo firefight

The deadline for Albanian rebels to move out of hills approaches

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- A joint U.S.-Russian patrol has traded gunfire with ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo, a U.S. army spokesman said.

The incident began late on Wednesday when NATO-led peacekeepers patrolling near the Kosovo village of Vela Glava found rebels guarding a building, 1st Sgt. Brian Thomas told the Associated Press.

The rebels shot at the patrol, and the peacekeepers returned fire, Thomas said. One rebel was wounded and five others were detained.

The village, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) southeast of the capital, Pristina, is located just outside a three-mile (five-kilometre) -wide buffer zone that lies between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia.

The buffer zone was established in 1999 when NATO bombing -- launched to stop former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on the ethnic Albanian population -- forced the Serb-dominated troops out of Kosovo.

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It was intended to keep Serbs at a distance from Kosovo, but it soon turned into a fighting area itself, with ethnic Albanian militants using it as a base for attacks on Serbs.

The Yugoslav army has now entered 80 percent of the zone, leaving only the most sensitive ethnic area to be occupied.

Yugoslav troops are set to return to the final section of the buffer zone along Serbia's boundary with Kosovo on May 24.

The shooting came the same day that the top commander of the NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo offered an amnesty to ethnic Albanian rebels fighting in southern Serbia if they lay down their arms.