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Evidence and testimony was gathered from refugees for possible use in future war crimes trials RELATED VIDEO CNN's Matthew Chance reports refugees are already being moved from Macedonia -- and many don't want to go (April 9) Windows Media 28K 80K CNN's Catherine Bond reports on Friday's clash near the Albanian-Kosovo border (April 9) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K CNN's Mike Hanna talks with refugees who dream of leaving camps for home (April 9) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K CNN's Richard Blystone gives a close-up view of life in a refugee camp (April 9) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K To view the latest video streams on the strikes in Yugoslavia, use the arrow buttons below to scroll through the video gallery.        Windows Media Real        28 K 80 K IMAGE GALLERY: Burning flags and rock concerts: Protesting the NATO strikes Devastation of Kosovo capital The Serbs and Kosovo  ALSO Envoy: No progress in talks on U.S. soldiers U.S.: Russian missiles not retargeted at NATO Annan asks Milosevic to end 'tragedy' in Kosovo U.S. casts doubt on Cuban base as refugee site  MAPS NATO officials describe attacks from day one through day sixteen

April 9, 1999
Web posted at: 9:52 p.m. EDT (0152 GMT)

MORINA, Albania (CNN) -- Hundreds of Kosovo Albanians were expelled from Kosovo late Friday as Yugoslavia unexpectedly reopened its main border crossing to Albania for a short time.

Observers said Yugoslav forces began allowing refugees to pass through the border station near the Albanian town of Morina at about 11 p.m. local time.

At least 1,500 to 2,000 people in more than 150 vehicles crossed into Albania in the hour before the Morina border crossing abruptly closed again.

Andrea Agneli, spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said OSCE monitors at the border reported that most of the refugees appeared to come from a village about 5 kilometers (3 miles) west of the Kosovo provincial capital, Pristina.

The refugees said they were ordered by Serb police to leave their village at about noon on Friday. They were escorted by Serb authorities to the border and ordered across.

The Yugoslav-Albanian border was closed earlier this week and Serb forces were seen by reporters placing mines near the checkpoint. A mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians had crossed the border since NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia began March 24.

Earlier Friday, nearly 800 ethnic Albanians entered Macedonia, some of them lone children on bicycles, as U.N. workers began collecting evidence for possible war crimes charges. The refugees said they had left behind burned homes and relatives too old to make the difficult journey.

Albanian television reported that tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians were trapped by Serb forces in the rural Upper Drenica region of Kosovo.

"The population of this part of Drenica expects from the international community that it will open a corridor urgently and bring in food and medicine, because supplies have run out and the population is threatened with starvation," said the broadcast.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata toured a week-old camp in Brazda on Friday. With 2,000 tents and 25,000 refugees, it is the largest of the NATO camps sheltering ethnic Albanians.

A young boy burst into Ogata's guided tour, demanding to know when he could return to Kosovo. Ogata reached out to give him what was meant to be a reassuring pat.

"I would like to go back there, too," she said. "We can go back when we can go there safely."

More than 122,000 Kosovars are estimated to be in Macedonia, either in refugee camps or staying in houses of other ethnic Albanians.

NATO forces now are doing much of the grunt work of running the camps -- handing out milk and bread in food lines, tracking down blankets for children.

NATO spokesmen in Macedonia said the alliance planned to turn the work over to the UNHCR and start pulling out of the first camps within 48 hours.

Unlike Albania, Macedonia has been reluctant to take in refugees, and has acknowledged at least one instance of security forces who guard the camps' perimeters beating a camp resident.

"I think for the time being, it would be important to ask NATO to maintain security," Ogata told reporters in Skopje.

Ogata said Macedonia had agreed to keep its borders open to refugees in any future crisis.

Ogata also indicated that plans by the United States and Canada to take in more than 20,000 refugees were on hold, because the United Nations is trying to keep as many people as possible within the region and wants to use more distant countries only as a fallback.

A refugee boy runs away from a truck distributing bread

A Canadian envoy in Macedonia said more refugees may be sent to Albania, where more than 300,000 Kosovars have already fled.

"What the U.N. is looking at is an offer from Albania to take 100,000 out of Macedonia and dispersal in neighboring countries such as Turkey and Bulgaria as a first-line response -- holding the Canadian option and other more distant options available for a second round if and when that's needed," said Ambassador Raphael Girard, Canada's special envoy for the Kosovo refugee situation.

Aid workers began questioning refugees about their plight, documenting evidence to send to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Many Kosovo Albanians have said Serb forces kicked them out of their homes at gunpoint, torched their villages and tortured and killed civilians.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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