Tagesnachrichten 19. Juli 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
weitere Presse-Meldungen
further press news
Tagesnachrichten 19. Juli 1998
NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, JULY 19, 1998
___________________________________
Taken without permission, for fair use only.
Shells Reported to Fall on Albania as Serbs Battle
Rebels
Kosovo conflict escalates
Guerrillas Advance in Kosovo
Serbs say driving KLA from town, mount ambush
British aid worker Sally Becker jailed
Albania angry as Kosovo fighting intensifies
Yugoslavs jail Angel of Mostar on mercy trip
___________________________________
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
July 19, 1998
Shells Reported to Fall on Albania as Serbs Battle Rebels
PRISTINA, Serbia -- Serbian forces clashed with
Kosovo Albanian rebels along the Albanian-Yugoslav border Saturday and
Serbian shells exploded inside Albanian territory, the Albanian Interior
Ministry said.
The report was the first
of shelling on the Albanian side of the border.
The Serbian shells fell
about 500 yards inside Albania but no one was hurt, an Interior Ministry
spokesman, Artan Bizhga, said in Tirana, the Albanian capital. The Albanian
Army did not respond, he added.
Citing information from
Albanian border guards, Bizhga said the clashes began early this morning,
and shooting could still be heard at 7 A.M.
Albanian soldiers saw
several people killed and wounded on the Yugoslav side of the border, Bizhga
added.
He said the shelling
occurred around Padesh, nine miles from the northern Albanian town of Tropoja
where more than a dozen rebel fighters, including five who were seriously
wounded, arrived at the town's hospital.
In a separate report,
the pro-Government Serbian Information Center in Pristina, the capital
of Kosovo Province in southern Serbia, said Yugoslav border guards had
clashed with about 1,000 armed ethnic Albanian rebels.
Citing military sources,
the center said the rebels had tried to cross into Yugoslavia, which comprises
Serbia and Montenegro. Ethnic Albanians make up about 90 percent of the
population of Kosovo.
Another report, from
Serbian police sources, said fighting was also under way for the control
of Orahovac, a town in the southwest of the province.
Albanian sources in
Kosovo confirmed the attack on Orahovac, about 40 miles southwest of Pristina.
The clashes began Friday and were continuing Saturday, the sources added.
The Serbian police sources
described the situation as "very serious," and said Kosovo Liberation Army
guerrillas had seized the town's medical center.
Orahovac, which has
a population of around 15,000, chiefly ethnic Albanians, is in a region
controlled mainly by the rebels, whose local stronghold is some 15 miles
away at Malisevo.
A resident of the town
contacted by telephone on Friday said the rebels had attacked the town
and Serbian policemen had retaliated. Fighting had reached the center of
the town, he added.
The fighting appeared
to be the first time that ethnic Albanian rebels, who have been gaining
in strength in recent weeks, have launched an offensive for control of
a Serbian-held area.
Much of their activity
since February, when the first major clashes began, has been hit-and-run
attacks on Serbian targets or fending off assaults by Serbian security
forces.
More than 350 people,
among them 27 policemen, have died since February in armed clashes in Kosovo
and thousands have fled their homes because of the fighting.
___________________________________
Kosovo conflict escalates
07:47 a.m. Jul 19, 1998 Eastern
By Douglas Hamilton
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - The conflict in Kosovo
escalated as Serbian police and Yugoslav army troops battled ethnic Albanian
separatists on Sunday for control of the town of Orahovac.
Serbian sources said
they had begun a counter-offensive to prevent guerrillas of the separatist
Kosovo Liberation Army from capturing their first major town, and they
denied rumors that it had fallen to the KLA insurgents.
Neighboring Albania
meanwhile denounced Serbia for what it said was a gross violation of sovereignty,
alleging that Serb forces fired shells into Albania during an operation
to ambush a large infiltration by ethnic Albanian guerrillas.
Major powers trying
to broker peace talks fear the conflict could widen, engulfing Albanian
and Macedonia in war.
Serbs and ethnic Albanians
both reported heavy fighting on Saturday as fighters of the Kosovo Liberation
Army tried to storm the police station in the center of Orahovac, a mainly
ethnic Albanian town 60 km (40 miles) southwest of Pristina.
Serbian military sources
said on Saturday night that they had begun a counter-offensive to dislodge
the guerrillas. They denied a media report that 20 Serbian policemen had
surrendered.
At the north end of
the town, KLA fighters advanced from a chest-high barrier of white sandbags,
firing into the street as repeated bursts of heavy machinegun fire rattled
the air.
South of Orahovac, Serbian
police turned back cars on the main Prizren to Djakovica highway, saying
there was heavy fighting for the road, which had been cut by KLA barricades.
``It started yesterday
afternoon and has been going on since,'' a police officer told Reuters.
Two truckloads of flak-jacketed
Yugoslav army soldiers arrived on the scene and mechanical excavators were
brought up, apparently in readiness to breach the roadblocks.
Near the Albanian border,
Serb forces said they had ambushed between 700 and 1,000 ethnic Albanian
fighters trying to cross into Kosovo at Djeravica in two groups.
Shelling inside neighboring
Albania was denied in Pristina by a Serbian security source who said the
attempted infiltration was the biggest in the 4-1/2-month conflict.
Television reporters
filmed eight dead Albanians dressed in camouflage uniform at the scene
of the ambush but quoted unofficial Serbian security sources as saying
at least 30 of the infiltrators had been killed.
Stacks of weapons, mostly
outdated communist makes, were seized in the ambush in high mountain territory.
A Yugoslav soldier was
badly wounded and a policeman was killed by a sniper on his way to reinforce
the army. In Albania, state television showed film of 19 badly wounded
KLA fighters in uniform whom it said had been flown by helicopter from
the border area to hospital in Tirana.
The KLA had advanced
several km closer to the town of Orahovac from their stronghold at Maljisevo
and appeared to be trying to surround it on three sides, leaving an exit
for Serbs to retreat.
Reuters reporters sheltered
behind a building watching the scene until four hardened KLA combat fighters
arrived and ordered: ``Leave now. No pictures.''
The KLA says it is in
control of half of Kosovo but the seven main population centers are still
in the hands of the Serbian government. Ethnic Albanians make up 80 percent
of the 20,000 population of Orahovac.
The Serbian media center
in the provincial capital Pristina described the situation in and around
the town as ``dramatic.''
It said there had been
some deaths and it accused the Albanians, who are fighting for independence,
of blowing up the power sub-station which supplies Orahovac.
The Albanian-run Kosovo
Information Center in Pristina blamed Serbian provocation for the fighting
which it said had broken out when Serbian police tried to shoot their way
through an area where an unidentified corpse lay in the street.
Reports said those civilians
who had not fled to Prizren, 20 km (12 miles) to the south, were hiding
in basements.
A successful attack
to evict the Serbs from Orahovac would be a major coup for the KLA, which
has not succeeded in taking any significant Kosovar town in over four months
of fighting.
The main road from Pristian
to the southern city of Prizren remained open but guarded by Yugoslav tanks
in hilltop positions for part of the way through open country.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________
Saturday July 18 7:07 PM EDT
Guerrillas Advance in Kosovo
ADAM BROWN Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugos(AP) - Serb forces shelled villages
Saturday along a gunrunning route used by ethnic Albanian guerrillas and
the Yugoslav army claimed to kill 30 rebels in a separate operation that
foiled a mass infiltration from Albania.
The secessionists, meanwhile,
also claimed successes in their fight for independence for Kosovo province,
part of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia.
Kosovo Liberation Army fighters launched a major
offensive Saturday on a Serb-held town that appeared to be a grab for territory.
Ethnic Albanians, who
outnumber Serbs 9-to-1 in Kosovo, control an estimated 40 percent of Kosovo.
In reporting the 30
dead, a Yugoslav army statement said 1,000 ``terrorists'' tried to cross
from Albania into Kosovo, west of Decani town. About 30 were ``liquidated''
and the incursion was foiled, it said.
The intense Serb shelling
began late Friday near the village of Padesh, the main route for 13,000
Kosovo refugees who crossed into Albania in June to escape Serb attacks.
The KLA is believed to use the route to smuggle in guns and ammunition
from northern Albania.
Albanian border guards
reported seeing the bodies of dead and wounded victims but gave no casualty
count, said Artan Bizhga of the Albanian interior ministry, which controls
the border police.
Bizhga said 19 wounded
KLA members crossed into Albania to escape the intense barrage. And Albania's
state TV said that 80 others fleeing the violence- apparently civilians
- strayed into a deadly border minefield. They were evacuated by Albanian
border troops, state TV reported.
The wounded guerrillas,
some wearing uniforms with the KLA insignia, were taken by helicopter to
Tirana, Albania's capital. Reporters there said most of the wounds appeared
relatively minor.
Albania's deputy interior
minister, Ilir Cano, said that two Serb mortar rounds had landed inside
Albanian territory.
``These dangerous incidents
(could) have very dangerous consequences,'' said Cano, hinting at a possible
military response to such violations of Albania's territorial sovereignty.
He said Albania lodged
a protest and demanded a meeting with Yugoslav authorities.
The guerrilla offensive
at the central town of Orahovac, about 30 miles southwest of the capital,
Pristina, was described by ethnic Albanian sources as their largest offensive
in almost five months of combat against Serb security forces.
The ethnic Albanian
Kosovo Information Center said the KLA wrested more than half a mile of
hilly terrain from Serb control and may have entered Orahovac.
Much of Orahovac was
under KLA control, a local journalist based in Pristina said after returning
from the Orahovac fighting. The militants had taken 20 policemen into custody
and were holding off police reinforcements, the journalist said on condition
of anonymity.
The pro-government Serb
Media Center described the fighting as a ``dramatic'' KLA assault ``from
several directions'' that sent civilians streaming from the area. It said
more than 40 Serb civilians had been kidnapped by ethnic Albanian fighters.
The advances reportedly
provoked a Serbian counter-offensive. Witnesses near Orahovac said they
saw Serb tanks and artillery pieces moving on the outskirts of the village.
None of the reports
could be verified independently. But both Serb and Kosovo Albanian sources
spoke of intense fighting at Orahovac.
The crackdown on the
Kosovo Liberation Army that began in February has triggered a backlash
in the province not only against the government but also against Kosovo
Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, whose commitment to nonviolence has failed
to end the bloodshed or win self-rule.
That result has been
converts to the KLA. A mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe was meeting with Rugova on Saturday in an attempt to find a negotiated
end to the violence.
___________________________________
Serbs say driving KLA from town, mount ambush
07:52 a.m. Jul 19, 1998 Eastern
By Douglas Hamilton
PRISTINA, Serbia, July 19 (Reuters) - Yugoslav
security forces killed at least 20 Kosovo Albanian guerrillas in a border
ambush on Sunday and began to drive separatist attackers from the southwest
town of Orahovac, official Serb sources said.
The army scattered three
groups of several hundred Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas trying
to cross into Kosovo from Albania at around midnight.
Unofficial Serb informants
said the death toll was much higher than the 20 reported as the Albanians
fled, dropping large amounts of Chinese-made weapons and ammunitions destined
for KLA forces who claim to control half of Kosovo.
The fighting occurred
on the Kosovo-Albanian mountain border near Djeravica where the army reported
killing 30 KLA men in a similar ambush on Saturday.
The Serb media centre
in Pristina said fighting continued in Orahovac but that a police counter-offensive
cleared the downtown area around its police station on Sunday morning.
The Serb account, not
immediately confirmed by Kosovo Albanian sources, said KLA guerrillas were
still barricaded in the post office, an infirmary and a school but that
resistance was weak. Eight KLA men were captured.
The KLA attacked Orahovacy,
60 miles (37 km) from Pristina, on Frida in an attempt to capture the police
station and take control of the town, which has a mainly ethnic Albanian
population of 20,000.
The guerrilla assault
coincided with a visit to Pristina, the provincial capital, by a delegation
from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which
is trying to activate talks between the two sides under the mediation of
former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.
Gonazalez has been prevented
from starting his mission by Yugoslavia's insistance that the West has
no right to meddle in Kosovo.
Mediation by the OSCE
and a Big Power Contact Group composed of the United States, Russia, Britain,
France, Germany and Italy is intended to steer Kosovo back to autonomy
within Yugoslavia.
The KLA, along with
mainstream Kosovo Albanian political leaders, is dedicated to full independence
for the southern Serbian province.
Albanian sources said
clashes were continuing in villages around Orahovac. Both sides said that
many inhabitants had fled 20 km (12 miles) south to the safety of Prizren
Reporters at the scene
on Saturday said the KLA advanced on Orahovac from their stronghold at
Maljisevo to the north and appeared to be trying to surround it on three
sides, leaving an exit for Serbs to retreat.
The KLA says it is in
control of half of Kosovo but the seven main population centres are still
in the hands of the Serbian government.
The Serbian media centre
in the provincial capital Pristina described the situation in and around
the town on Saturday as ``dramatic.''
It said there had been
some deaths and it accused the Albanians, who are fighting for independence,
of blowing up the electricity sub-station which supplies Orahovac.
The Albanian-run Kosovo
Information Centre in Pristina blamed Serbian provocation for the fighting
which it said had broken out when Serbian police tried to shoot their way
through an area where an unidentified corpse lay in the street.
Tanjug news agency said
the Yugoslav government had protested to Britain over the activities of
British aid worker Sally Becker who was jailed for 30 days in Djakovica
for trying to smuggle Kosovo Albanian refugees across the border into Albania
proper.
``By crossing the border,
Becker heavily violated Yugoslav laws and blemished the profession of humanitarian
workers,'' a Yugoslav statement said.
Becker, 37, allegedly
entered Kosovo illegally from Albania and was captured trying to return
on Friday with an Kosovo Albanian woman and her two children.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________
Sunday, July 19, 1998 Published at 12:00 GMT 13:00
UK
BBCNEWS
Albania angry as Kosovo fighting intensifies
Fighting between Yugoslav security forces and
ethnic Albanian separatists has escalated in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Up to 90 people, most
of them fighters with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), were reported killed
in fighting close to the Albanian border on Saturday night.
There are fears the
war could spread after Albania's deputy interior minister, Ilir Cano, accused
the Serbs of firing two mortar rounds into Albanian territory.
Mr Cano said: "These
dangerous incidents could have very dangerous consequences."
Belgrade and Tirana at loggerheads
Tirana has lodged a formal protest and demanded
a meeting with the Yugoslav authorities.
The Yugoslav army denied
violating the border.
The upsurge in violence
follows several relatively quiet days.
The Serbs say they inflicted
heavy casualties on the KLA - who are also known by the Albanian initials
UCK - after a group of around 1,000 infiltrators tried to cross the border
into Kosovo.
KLA sources insisted
no more than ten of their fighters died.
Around 200 broke through
the border while hundreds more fled back to Albania.
But while the KLA has
suffered a reverse on the border elsewhere it is making gains.
'KLA trying to take Orahovac'
'Fighting reaches town centre'
Independent observers say the KLA is making a
determined attempt to seize the townof Orahovac 30 miles (50km) from the
Kosovo capital Pristina.
They are reported to
have made significant advances, although Serb reinforcements have been
arriving and there is continuing heavy fighting.
Some reports say the
fighting has reached the centre of the town.
Serb police sources
described the situation as "very serious," and said KLA guerrillas had
seized the town's medical centre.
The pro-government Serb
Media Centre said more than 40 Serb civilians had been kidnapped by the
KLA.
Orahovac, which has
a population of around 15,000 mainly ethnic Albanians, lies near the border
of Kosovo and Albania in a region controlled mainly by the KLA. Their local
stronghold is 20km away at Malisevo.
___________________________________
THE LONDON TIMES
July 19 1998EUROPE
Yugoslavs jail Angel of Mostar on mercy trip
A BRITISH freelance aid worker known as the Angel
of Mostar has been jailed after being arrested for trying to smuggle a
refugee family into Albania, writes Paul Hooper.
Sally Becker, 37, who
earned her nickname for her daring exploits during the Bosnian war, was
stopped by an army patrol and questioned by police at Djakovica in Kosovo.
David Slinn, a British
diplomat, was told unofficially that Becker, from Hove, East Sussex, had
been jailed for 30 days. He said: "We assume it was on charges of entering
the country without a visa."
Becker is reported to
have crossed into Kosovo illegally from Albania. She and the refugees,
an ethnic Albanian family, were stopped by Yugoslav soldiers patrolling
an area where fighting had taken place only 15 minutes earlier.
Becker made her reputation
five years ago after rescuing 25 wounded children from the Muslim sector
of Mostar in Bosnia while it was under artillery and sniper fire.
Since then she has clashed
repeatedly with United Nations aid workers, who have accused her of acting
irresponsibly in Bosnia and later in Chechnya when it was under attack
from the Russian army in 1995.
An aid source in Chechnya
said: "She has a flair for publicity and has achieved some results but
they have come at what I call plainly unacceptable risk to those she has
helped and to herself."
Slinn said that after
her arrest he spoke to her by telephone for seven minutes and she was "generally
okay".
British diplomats are
hoping to be able to speak to her again later today. They do not know the
fate of the ethnic Albanian family.
Thousands of Albanians
have fled across the border to escape the fighting between Serbian security
forces and the separatist guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
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