DOZENS of civilians have been killed and a policeman burnt to death during clashes in the south of Albania, a Greek television report said last night. The Catholic aid agency, Caritas, which has workers in the area, said that the Albanian army was encircling the southern rebel town of Vlore.
Meanwhile, in the capital, Tirana, Albania's main opposition Socialist Party said it had urged President Sali Berisha in talks yesterday to agree to a new broad-based government to help end the unrest gripping the south.
Mr Pandeli Majko, one of three Socialist leaders at the talks, said the party had gained "no sense of compromise" from Mr Berisha at the meeting, their first since parliament declared a state of emergency on Sunday.
Bulgaria called for an international effort to resolve the crisis and warned that the entire Balkan region could suffer if it failed.
The Greek channel quoted the head of the organisation that represents southern Albania's Greek majority, Mr Kostas Lambovitiadis, as saying he saw helicopters and heard shots in the town of Delvine, a few kilometers north of the port of Sarande.
Mr Lambovitiadis told the channel, SKAI, by phone that there were "dozens of dead".
Insurrection grips the south of the impoverished Balkan republic where anti-government protesters have seized control of several large towns. Sarande has been in the hands of armed gangs who in the past days have burnt buildings, taken control of naval vessels and set police vehicles on fire.
Father Giuseppe Colavero of Caritas, who said he had been in radio contact with aid workers in the Vlore area, said the military deployment was almost complete by early evening. Vlore has been the focus of the southern revolt.
Mr Majko said: "We told Berisha we were ready for a wide political accord under which he would stop using the army and we would agree to form a new broad-based government.
"We are convinced it will be difficult to achieve this, but we told Mr Berisha it is no longer a matter of left or right but of protecting people and stopping further blood from being shed.
"We told him that if we reached a common political view then ordinary people who are now on the streets without knowing why would dissociate themselves from the disorder," he said.
"It would then be possible to find the true terrorists" among the protesters, he added. Asked what Mr Berisha's response was, Mr Majko said the President had told the Socialists, successors to Albania's old communists not to try to take power by arms
"We advised him that we would never want power through blood," Mr Majko said.
An Albanian military plane landed in southern Italy yesterday and its two pilots asked for political asylum, the Defence Ministry said.