Fierce clashes in Macedonia

One of many families which fled the crisis zone

TETOVO, Macedonia -- Macedonian forces have clashed with ethnic Albanian rebels in some of the fiercest fighting in the country's north-western area since March.

In Tetovo, Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian town, tank and machine gun fire could be heard from the Shar Mountains near the villages of Shipkovica and Gajre.

A Macedonian radio station reported rebels attacking army positions near Gajre, with three members of the security forces injured by shrapnel according to the Macedonian state agency MIA.

Residents of Tetovo said they believed it to be the heaviest fighting they had heard since the army pushed rebels back from positions above the town at the end of March.

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In recent weeks, clashes have been concentrated on villages in mountains to the northeast of the capital Skopje rather than around Tetovo to the west.

Thousands of villagers have been caught in the crossfire and a lull in fighting allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to evacuate 66 sick and elderly civilians on Monday.

By Tuesday however, the ICRC said it was unable to mount new missions because of fears for aid workers' safety with spokeswoman Annick Bouvier telling Reuters that Macedonia had blocked the plan.

"We tried to obtain security guarantees for our teams to access the affected villages, but we were given a red light by the Macedonian side," she said.

The Macedonian Defence Ministry has denied it is standing in the way of the ICRC.

Buckovski appealed to Rumsfeld to help block funding of ethnic Albanian rebels

An ethnic Albanian doctor speaking by telephone from the village of Slupcane, hit hard by army shelling recently, said the main problem people faced was finding safe drinking water, according to Reuters.

The carcasses of dead animals were polluting the river and the wells, and people were falling ill, Fatmir Hasani said.

The rebels say they are seeking greater rights and recognition for Macedonia's minority ethnic Albanians -- who make up between a quarter and a third of the population in the majority Slav country.

The government argues that they are terrorists bent on grabbing land and carving out an ethnic Albanian mini-state linked with the neighbouring Serbian province of Kosovo.

Macedonia on Tuesday asked the United States and its allies to help stop the flow of money and weapons from the ethnic Albanian diaspora which it believes is helping fuel the insurgency.

Associated Press reported that the appeal was delivered by Defence Minister Vlado Buckovski to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

There was no immediate comment from Rumsfeld who met Buckovski briefly at Skopje airport before flying to Kosovo to visit U.S. peacekeepers stationed there.

Around half-a-million ethnic Albanians from Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo live in Western Europe and hundreds of thousands more in the U.S.

The U.S. and its allies have condemned the violence in Macedonia and urged the Slav-led government and ethnic Albanian leaders to work out their differences peacefully.