Macedonia's army launched a major offensive yesterday against villages held by ethnic Albanian guerrillas in northern Macedonia, raising fears for thousands of civilians trapped in the towns.
The guerrillas, who seized control of villages around the northern city of Kumanovo at the start of the month, said at least 11 civilians were killed and some 200 wounded when shells struck homes in which they were hiding.
In some of the most intense action seen since Albanian rebels began armed actions in the multi-ethnic state in March, the army launched a major assault early yesterday, using tank cannon, mortars and heavy machineguns against the guerrilla-held villages.
A Defence Ministry spokesman said troops had taken up positions very close to two flashpoint villages, Vaksince and Lojane, with the aim of evacuating civilians towards a location in the north.
However, he said that special police units, not troops, would actually enter the villages. It was the first time since the start of the latest military operations on May 3rd that the infantry had been deployed in the fighting.
A commander of the ethnic Albanians' National Liberation Army (NLA) said 10 civilians died when a shell struck the cellar in which they were hiding in the village of Slupcane. Another died in the nearby hamlet of Orizare, and some 200 people were hurt, he said.
Thousands of civilians - 10,000 according to the estimates of the International Committee of the Red Cross - have remained in the combat zone. The government in Skopje has repeatedly appealed to civilians to leave the area of the fighting, saying the safety of the population has been its main concern.
On May 17th Skopje announced it was suspending its military operations against the guerrillas in order to avoid "bloodshed" and civilian deaths. The pause in fighting coincided with the formation of a national unity government grouping parties representing Macedonia's large ethnic Albanian minority and Slav majority.
But the government has also refused to negotiate with the rebels and warned it would respond to armed guerrilla actions.
An army spokesman, Col Blagoja Markovski, said the "offensive actions" were launched to "surround the region of conflict, to arrest and push back the groups of terrorists and create conditions to allow civilians to leave the region".
Meanwhile, Yugoslav forces have moved back into the last piece of a buffer zone around Kosovo, meeting virtually no resistance yesterday from ethnic Albanian guerrillas based there but moving slowly because of mines.
Operation Bravo, which was approved by NATO, is intended to bring an end to 16 months of insurgency. The rebels say their aim is to protect the sizeable Albanian minority in southern Serbia, taking advantage of the security vacuum in the zone.
Some 4,000 Yugoslav troops and special paramilitary police started moving at 8 a.m. (5 p.m.) into Sector B of the 5kmwide zone, a hilly, densely forested area of scattered villages and few paved roads.
NATO imposed the zone at the end of its 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, to protect international peace-keepers and the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo.
Little resistance was expectedafter the guerrillas agreed to disband earlier this week and more than 300 gave themselves up under an amnesty offered by the NATO-backed Kfor force in Kosovo.