Mahije Mala is running out of places to hide, and after seeing a Serbian policeman's knife at her teenage daughter's throat, she knows what may happen if the wrong people find her.
Mala (39) is the wife of a founding commander of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army. With her village captured in an offensive by Serb forces and her house burned down, she joined an estimated 20,000 refugees streaming to Kosovo's capital, Pristina, over the past several days.
But to flee, Mala and her children first had to get past Serb police, who wanted information about her husband.
Mala said a policeman put his knife to the throat of her daughter, Iliriana (17), and said: "Tell me, who is your father?"
He let her and the rest of the family go, but set their house on fire, Mala said. She headed south-east, 15 miles to Pristina, thinking it was the safest place for her five children.
Just a few days earlier, she would have been right. But as NATO prepares to bomb military and special police targets in and around Kosovo, its capital cannot escape war's vortex any longer.
Shops close around 4 p.m. People hurry home to get off the streets before dark. Even behind their own locked doors they are afraid because no one can tell when NATO's bombs might fall, and who might come looking for revenge.
Serbian special police units, armed with assault rifles and patrolling in armoured vehicles, have come down hard in Pristina after gunmen killed four policemen at a checkpoint on Sunday night.
One of the slain policemen, Mr Aleksandar Milojkovic (25), was buried beside his mother on Tuesday.
For three nights now, Mala and her children have tried to get some sleep in a small classroom. They lie on the wooden benches because the concrete floor is too cold.
Most of the night, Mala lies awake in the dark, listening for the next gunshot or a knock at the door. She is terrified that if NATO attacks, Serbs looking for revenge will find her and her children.
"I'm afraid, very much afraid," Mala said, gently rocking her fiveyear-old son in her lap as she began to cry.
"Last night there was shooting everywhere around us. I don't know what was happening. Some boy was killed."
Mala was speaking of Mr Kushtrim Gashi (18), a student, who was shot in the back around 5.30 p.m. on Monday while trying to get out of Pristina's Sunny Hill district during a police sweep.
The police report of his death only cited initial evidence that he was killed by automatic weapons, and that an investigation was under way.
Other relatives described how a police officer killed him from behind with a single bullet, from about 30 yards away.
"There were five or six policemen standing near a primary school. Kushtrim was with his brother, and his aunt, and they just shot him," his cousin, Mr Mustafa Gashi (44), said. "He was killed because he is Albanian."