Macedonian forces are poised to resume an offensive against ethnic Albanian rebels in north-eastern mountains as the Skopje parliament has called an extraordinary session to discuss the worsening crisis.
Macedonian helicopter gunships and artillery unleashed fire in an area where ethnic Albanian rebels had ambushed an army patrol, killing two soldiers yesterday.
Two heavily-armed, Soviet-built Mi-24 helicopters circled over the village of Vakcince, northeast of the capital, firing rockets at houses and a nearby forest in mid-afternoon.
Booming artillery shells exploded inside the hamlet. Smoke and flames billowed up from houses and burning trees.
Later in the day a Reutersreporter in the area, around the town of Kumanovo, saw smoke rising from three villages. An armoured personnel carrier (APC) was parked on the outskirts of Vakcince firing bursts of heavy machinegun rounds into it.
Thick smoke rose into the clear sky from several houses and more distant thumps, apparently of mortar fire, could be heard.
Further away from Vakcince, dozens of people sat on balconies or stood on bridges to get a glimpse of the firing.
As darkness fell, shots became more and more sporadic.
The latest violence marked a further deterioration of the security situation in Macedonia, where ethnic Albanian guerrillas launched an insurgency earlier this year which has prompted international fears of another Balkan war.
In a sign of growing international concern, European Union sources said that EU foreign and security policy chief Mr Javier Solana would visit Macedonia on Sunday after an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Sweden.
"The European Union strongly condemns the renewed acts of violence by ethnic Albanian extremists...including the killing of two soldiers, the occupation of several villages and the taking of hostages," the EU said in a statement.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher conveyed the same message.
"The United States condemns the unprovoked killings of two Macedonian soldiers and kidnapping a third today by ethnic Albanian extremists near the border of Serbia," he said.