Fighting traps Macedonia villagers

SKOPJE, Macedonia (CNN) -- A new gun battle has broken out in northern Macedonia where thousands of civilians remain trapped in rebel-held villages.

Government troops and ethnic Albanian insurgents exchanged fire for about an hour early on Monday.

The skirmishes broke the latest lull in fighting that allowed relief workers to evacuate dozens of ethnic Albanians caught in the middle of the conflict.

Fighting first erupted in February when the rebels began fighting for more rights for the ethnic Albanians who make up about one-third of Macedonia's population.

Macedonian army spokesman Blagoja Markovski told the Associated Press that the rebels attacked at dawn with light arms from the villages of Slupcane and Vaksince. The military responded with artillery fire, Markovski said.

On Monday, he reiterated government claims that the villagers were being used as human shields by the rebels to protect them from a large-scale government offensive.

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CNN's Chris Burns said ethnic Albanian fighters are defiantly continuing to search cars at checkpoint in the besieged village of Slupcane.

He said there was no indication the rebels were going to withdraw, even though the government had threatened to attack after the expiry of its deadline.

Describing the grim scene in Slupcane, he added: "The toll from nearly three weeks of off-and-on fighting, is visible everywhere -- homes, farm houses and a mosque.

"Villagers say many livestock have been killed -- horses as well as cows, depriving children of milk.

"Underground, women, children and the elderly, are hunkered down with no plans to leave, though conditions are worsening as they run low on food and medicine."

One villager, a woman, told him: "We are born here, we will die here. The NLA aren't terrorists. They are from our village. They are fighting for our rights."

Another said: "The people here don't want to leave, because their sons and daughters are on the front line."

But other civilians did agree to leave, evacuated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which took advantage of the tenuous halt in fighting.

Women and children, no longer able to endure the siege, fled to safety, leaving behind thousands of others.

Red Cross worker Thomas Jenatsch told CNN: "The situation is difficult. There are a lot of civilians. They have no water. They are very short on food. War is going on, so they are suffering."

Rebel commanders in Macedonia denied there was a plan for insurgents in southern Serbia to move into northern Macedonia and link up with guerrillas there.

"There is no truth in these reports," Commander Sokoli told Reuters. A second commander called Hoxha added: "We have enough soldiers already."

Sokoli's self-styled National Liberation Army denies links with the UCPMB rebels in Serbia's Presevo Valley. But the two ethnic Albanian armed groups are only 20 km apart and are assumed to cooperate.

Defence Ministry spokesman Gjorgji Trendafilov said at least 1,000 civilians still remained in the besieged villages after hundreds were evacuated by the ICRC in the past weeks.

The Macedonian government initially threatened to "eliminate" the rebels unless they accepted a deadline set for last Thursday to give up their armed struggle. But under intense pressure from the West, the government later promised restraint.

Western officials fear that a full-scale war in Macedonia could engulf the whole Balkans.

Responding to Western leaders' call for peace, Macedonia's political parties, including ethnic Albanians, recently formed a unity government to seek a political solution. But sporadic fighting has persisted.