Fighting reported in Macedonia

A Macedonian Army tank drives through the recently captured village of Opae

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Explosions have been reported near Macedonia's second-largest city, marking the resumption of clashes between ethnic Albanian rebels and the army.

Government authorities recently said the rebels had been defeated in the hills above Tetovo.

But the sounds of battle, as reported by the Associated Press on Wednesday, suggest they remain strong, despite several army offensives against them.

Hours earlier, eight policemen from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia were wounded near the village of Lisec -- on the Tetovo-Popova Sapka road -- when their cars were hit by mortar fire. Six remained in hospital on Wednesday.

Fighting first erupted in February with the rebels demanding more rights for the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia who make up nearly a third of the population of two million.

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The government insists the rebels are terrorists intent on carving off a piece of the country and uniting it with Kosovo or Albania.

To the northeast, the Kumanovo region was quiet on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, after fierce clashes lasted late into the previous evening.

Ethnic Albanian rebels fighting in the north of the country on Tuesday launched a mortar attack on government forces who responded with artillery fire.

Army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski told AP that the rebels shelled government positions with mortars on Mount Popova Sapka, above the north-western town of Tetovo.

"We responded with artillery and destroyed the terrorist group," Markovski said. He did not specify casualties.

Markovski said that on Monday the army made tentative gains in clashes with ethnic Albanian insurgents in northern villages, where thousands of civilians remain trapped as the army continues its offensive.

During lulls in the fighting, the International Red Cross has managed to evacuate hundreds of women, children and elderly, and deliver aid to those civilians still in villages. The government claims refugees are being used as human shields.

But on another Balkans battlefront, ethnic Albanian rebels have agreed to demilitarise a buffer zone between Kosovo and southern Serbia.

The Yugoslav army is due to re-enter the zone -- originally created by NATO in 1999 as part of the peace deal to end the Kosovo conflict -- on Thursday.

The leader of a key rebel ethnic Albanian rebel group agreed to disband and demobilise on Monday, but hundreds of other rebels have vowed to fight on.