Burning villages and mass graves are part of the history, still to be fully told, of the thousands of ethnic Albanians fleeing towards an uncertain future in Albania and Macedonia, according to NATO spokesmen. Although 20,000 refugees made it to Albania on Saturday, 50,000 are still on the way and the route is hazardous.
At a briefing in Brussels yesterday, they told journalists that at least 18 villages, and 200 residential neighbourhoods, had been burned out by Serb forces. They also reported chain gangs of gravediggers, dressed in red and orange jackets, who are forced to bury their fellow Albanians in what are now thought to be more than 40 mass graves.
Photographs showed rectangular sites where the bodies are buried in neat rows pointing towards Mecca, the last form of respect the forced workers could make for the dead, NATO claimed.
A Pentagon spokesman said in Washington yesterday that NATO's estimate of 3,200 executions was "very low", and that the death toll might be in tens of thousands.
The NATO spokesman in Brussels, Mr Jamie Shea, said yesterday that the condition of the refugees arriving now was much worse than those of two weeks ago. "They have had little or no food and have been walking in heavy rain for four to five days." NATO mobilisation of humanitarian aid in Albania was now better prepared to deal with the new influx although it would not be easy, Mr Shea claimed. Tirana airport now has a helicopter pad for a shuttle service and engineers are working on the runway so that round-the-clock food runs can get to Kukes, site of the largest camps.
Although all the refugees intend to return to Kosovo, some will return earlier. Indeed, some are going back already. They are going back to join the Kosovo Liberation Army once they have brought their families to safety, because of a sense of outrage at what is happening, NATO says.
The KLA is now carrying out attacks on the Yugoslav army in a number of different areas on the ground. In a series of rapid strikes and withdrawals, it is inflicting considerable damage on army and police units, particularly in the north of Kosovo but also in the central and eastern regions, the Allies claim.
NATO denies giving any support to the KLA, saying it wants it to hand in its arms and take part in the peace process once the conflict is resolved. But it is hard to deny that in the absence of Allied ground troops, the KLA is combining its efforts with the NATO air strikes and helping to create a sort of pincer movement.
Given better weather conditions, NATO's air power inflicted heavy damage on Kosovo over the weekend. From one strike alone, a tide of toxic fumes from a burning oil refinery continued to blanket Belgrade yesterday, but many other targets were hit. Evidence of greater care being taken to avoid any repetition of last Wednesday's heavy civilian casualties, when NATO mistakenly attacked a refugee convoy, was supplied by Brig Gen Giuseppe Marani and accompanied by photographs.
One of the returning pilots told of sighting a mobile radar system and circling to get in position to drop a bomb on it. As he came into position to fire, he noticed that it was very close to a church and redirected the bomb to explode in a wood nearby.
The full circumstances of Wednesday's "mistake" remain cloudy. NATO still cannot or will not either fully confirm or deny Serbian claims that aircraft struck four civilian convoys on the road to Dakovica. Even the admission that one civilian vehicle was hit is now in some doubt.
But Mr Shea said he was happy to continue to explain and justify NATO actions as far as he was able, "but this is something", he said "that Mr Milosevic does not have to do. He is not asked to explain why his army is carrying out rape, torture and ethnic cleansing." Repeating an assertion made on many previous occasions, Mr Shea said NATO was not at war with Serbia. "Milosevic", he said, "has brought Serbia - a very proud people and fine people - to the brink of disaster. Serbia is at an all-time low just when it should be heading for union with Europe, to which it has made a big contribution."