Warning over Macedonia villagers

A Macedonian police officer patrols in an ethnically mixed village near Skopje

SKOPJE, Macedonia (CNN) -- Civilians trapped in rebel-held villages in northern Macedonia face a "catastrophe," an army official said on Saturday.

The warning, by Colonel Blagoja Markovski, a Macedonian military spokesman, came as the army and ethnic Albanian rebels engaged in sporadic clashes for a second day running, defying an unofficial army cease-fire.

"I am afraid of an emerging humanitarian catastrophe," Markovski was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

He said 6,000 civilians were being held against their will in the village of Lipkovo and 1,000 others in a mosque in Otlje.

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On Friday, Macedonian army artillery targeted three villages in the northern Kumanovo region, near the border with Kosovo, that army officials see as a stronghold of a group of insurgents who have refused to lay down their guns.

But the army halted its fire after six volleys amid pressure from the European Union, NATO and the United States to calm tensions in the region.

The rebels had been given a deadline of noon on Thursday to cease their fire or face elimination.

The international community fears that unless the Macedonian army shows restraint, the region could become a staging ground for another round of Balkan bloodshed similar to that seen in other former Yugoslav republics.

Ethnic Albanians represent about one-third of Macedonia's two million people, making them the largest ethnic minority. Macedonian Slavs account for most of the remaining population.

The ethnic Albanians are pressing for constitutional revisions that would raise their official status alongside the country's dominant Slavs.

'Human shields'

The government in Skopje has so far refused to rewrite the constitution but has said it is open to discussion on the full range of ethnic Albanian grievances, including demands for greater use of the Albanian language.

The Macedonian military meanwhile claims the ethnic Albanian rebels are using residents in the villages of Slupane, Vaksince and Orizare as "human shields" against an all-out government assault.

The villagers themselves have rebuffed this theory. Many have used brief army-decreed pauses in the fighting to flee the besieged area - though others have remained holed up in their basement cellars.

Markovski, the army spokesman, blamed the rebels for the latest outbreaks of fighting. He told the Associated Press the clashed were provoked by insurgents holed up in the villages who opened up with sniper and machine gun fire several times starting late Friday. The army, he said responded by unleashing artillery barrages.

Meanwhile, Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski's office said in a statement this week that diplomacy and dialogue will be given a chance, though it added: "We will respond appropriately to any provocations."

The continued clashes pose a test to a government of "national unity" formed last weekend, grouping the country's largest Slav and ethnic Albanian parties.