| NATO: Reports indicate stepped up 'ethnic cleansing'
Refugees say thousands more Kosovars murdered
April 17, 1999
BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- NATO officials said Saturday that refugee reports indicate another 3,200 people have been killed in a renewed Yugoslav campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. NATO also said that new reconnaissance photos showed probable evidence of another mass grave site in the province. Yugoslav forces have stepped up efforts to depopulate the majority-Albanian province and crush the Kosovo Liberation Army, the separatist ethnic Albanian guerrilla movement, said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. "There is mounting evidence of detentions, summary executions and mass graves," Shea said. Reconnaissance planes turned up evidence of a mass grave site at Izbica, where as many as 150 people may have been buried, said Brig. Gen. Guisseppe Marani, NATO's military spokesman. NATO displayed the aerial photographs at its Saturday news briefing, but Marani cautioned that the photos were not concrete evidence of mass graves. "The situation in Kosovo remains bleak and NATO remains allthe more determined to put a stop to this," Marani said. Shea said NATO's airstrikes Friday night and Saturday concentrated on the Yugoslav Army's heavy weapons in Kosovo and destroyed seven tanks. "These are the kinds of losses that clearly are going to knock the stuffing out of Yugoslav forces in Kosovo," Shea said. Other NATO bombing raids hit targets in Titovo, Podjuevo, Urosevac and Pristina, Marani said. Shea said Yugoslav attacks on Kosovar villages were part of a so-far unsuccessful attempt to uproot the KLA, which had been all but written off after NATO began its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia on March 24. He accused Yugoslav troops and police of destroying villages as well as livestock, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and short of food.
Along Yugoslavia's border with Albania, a unilateral Orthodox Easter cease-fire declared by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic "is now giving way to a major counterinsurgency operation," Shea said. The Yugoslav offensive against the KLA has led to almostdaily shelling of villages across the Albanian frontier and a brief incursion Tuesday by Yugoslav troops. But KLA guerrillas operating from Albania have managed to keep open a corridor from Kosovo and are helping refugees escape the province, Shea said. Earlier Saturday, British military officials said NATO airstrikes were limiting the ability of Yugoslav forces to harass civilians. "Laying waste to villages comes to a halt as Serb forces take cover," said British Armed Forces Minister Doug Henderson. Meanwhile, a Yugoslav army officer captured by KLA guerrillas earlier this week has been turned over to U.S. military officials in Albania and is being treated well, Shea said. There was no immediate response about the Yugoslav officer from Belgrade, which holds three U.S. soldiers prisoner. "He has been given shelter, food and has access to religious counseling," Shea said of the Yugoslav officer. NATO will not use the officer for propaganda purposes, he said. The Pentagon said the lieutenant, whose name has not been released, was the commander of about 20 men from a larger force of some 300 Yugoslav army troops and 100 Serb police. Serbian Television reported Saturday that four NATO missiles slammed into a factory in the town of Valjevo, about 55 miles (90 km) southwest of Belgrade. It was not immediately clear what the factory produced. The report said the attack caused at least one fire and damage to civilian areas.
Belgrade residents, meanwhile, defied the threat of new air raids to hold a five-kilometer (three-mile) "fun run" Saturday. "We run and laugh, they (NATO) kill and will cry," saidGoran Sokolovic of Valjevo. But the attacks are taking a toll. Serbia's health ministry reported that it has lost a third of its water supplies, which it says is starting to affect health care. Yugoslav officials put casualty figures at about 350 dead and 3,500 injured. Doctors also claim the number of deaths from illness have risen sharply.
Friday, Yugoslavia formally turned down a U.N. peace proposal that calls for the deployment of an international military force in Kosovo. Vladislav Jovanovic, Yugoslavia's chargé d'affaires at the United Nations, said his country was willing to discuss a possible international civilian presence in Kosovo, but not military peacekeepers. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed an end to the fighting April 9. The initiative, which is similar to NATO's proposals, asks Yugoslav authorities to end the expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo; withdraw the Yugoslav military forces and Serb police; allow the return of refugees and displaced people to their homes; and accept the deployment of an international military force in the Serb province. But Jovanovic said that only after the NATO bombing ceased would his country withdraw its troops from Kosovo. "Parallel with the end of the aggression and the cessation of the bombings and the withdrawal of NATO forces, we would proceed to the reduction of our forces which existed in peacetime," Jovanovic said. Correspondents Brent Sadler, Matthew Chance, Ben Wedeman and Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: U.S. holding Yugoslav officer as POW RELATED SITES: Extensive list of Kosovo-related sites
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