KOSOVO: ALBANIAN REFUGEES URGED TO LEAVE CAMP IN ISTINIC

(12 Sep 1998) Albanian/Nat

Using loudspeakers mounted on vehicles and blasting messages in Albanian, Serb police have been attempting to get 7-thousand ethnic Albanian refugees to leave a camp in Istinic in Kosovo.

In the village of Gornji Ratis, 26 bodies have been found so far in what the authorities claim is a mass grave of Serb civilians executed by the Albanian rebels.

More than 265-thousand civilians have fled their homes since a Serb security force crackdown early this year on separatist ethnic Albanian rebels in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo.

With no homes to go to, the thousands of ethnic Albanians living in this field were told on Saturday that they have to leave.

Nearly 7-thousand refugees are camping here in the village of Istinic which lies 45 miles (72 kilometres) west of the provincial capital of Pristina.

One woman said they had been living in the open without food, clothes or medicines.

SOUNDBITE: (Albanian)
"They are going to kill us and I hope that somebody from abroad will help us because it's a very difficult time for us. We have been moving around for four months now. We've been sleeping in the mountains. We don't have any food, any clothes, any medicine. I'm worried about my kids and we don't know where to go, they've burnt our houses."
SUPER CAPTION: Vox Pop, Ethnic Albanian Refugee

Aid workers have brought some supplies to the camp.

But stomach illnesses and other health problems are spreading because of the lack of food and clean water.

The Serb police were everywhere in the camp.

One officer, using a loudspeaker, demanded that the refugees leave the field immediately.

Security forces watched over those refugees who had decided to leave the field.

With no place to go, these people left on tractors and trailers laden with the few belongings they have managed to hang on to.

The refugees had sought safety in Istinic after fleeing areas in the north and south of the region.

These villages were targeted by a Serb military offensive that ousted the secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army (K-L-A) from one of their last strongholds almost a week ago.

In Kosovo, ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs nine to one.

Many had already spent weeks in other refugee pockets where they fled the fighting in the early days of the conflict.

The six-month long fighting has left hundreds dead and a quarter of a (m) million homeless.

But as winter approaches, western officials fear a greater human disaster with an estimated 50-thousand refugees still living rough in forests and hills with little food, shelter or water.

Elsewhere in Gornji Ratis in Kosovo, Serb policemen claim to have found the body of a woman and say they have found a mass grave of 26 Serb civilians.

The K-L-A have attacked these claims as a Serb fabrication.

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