Italian and British troops seized the last two key Serbian strongholds in Kosovo yesterday, bringing joy to their inhabitants and confrontation with Serb forces.
The Italians raced north to capture the town of Pec, seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church and one of the most traumatised places in Kosovo, where paramilitary forces had waged an especially vicious bout of ethnic cleansing.
Meanwhile, a British armoured column drove into the north-western town of Podujevo, a key battleground for many months between the Serbs and rebel guerrillas.
While the Italians met little resistance, the British found Serb forces still in the town, and still burning Albanian homes. "Even with the Brits in there they were still burning people's houses," said one Western aid worker. "We went into a clinic, on the ground floor, and on the second floor they had started a fire. Serbian troops are still in the town."
Both NATO columns found lines of delighted refugees, in what has become a familiar spectacle throughout the last week, waving and dancing in the streets.
But British forces were pushed on to the back foot when an angry crowd moved on the Serb police station in Podujevo. Serb soldiers outside threatened to open fire, and the British threatened to fire on them. A police armoured car was blocked in the street by a Warrior armoured personnel carrier, but no shots were fired.
NATO says it expects to complete the occupation of all areas of Kosovo by tomorrow night, the deadline for all Serb forces to withdraw. And its commanders are already turning their attention to the rebels. Stung by criticism of their soft stance on arrival in the southern town of Prizren, German troops have told the KLA to dismantle armed checkpoints in the town by today.
British Maj Gen Richard Dannatt said it was part of a tightening up policy against the KLA, which has occupied Pec, Prizren and parts of Pristina. "We are not going to tolerate the waving around and brandishing of weapons by anyone at all," he said. "We are now providing the security and there is no need for anybody else to do it."
His comments came as German troops discovered 17 Serbs held prisoner in a former Serbian police jail by the KLA. The jail, in which hundreds of Albanians were once detained, has now a reversed role. The Germans found one Serb had been beaten so badly he later died, with some of the others injured.
More mass graves have been discovered, including one at Podujevo in which a man, going to his house in search of food, had stumbled on Serb soldiers who shot him twice through the back of the head and left his body to decompose. Britain said last night it was increasing its estimate for the number of Albanians killed during the ethnic cleansing of the province to
10,000 from 5,000. "Tragically, our estimates of the numbers of innocent men, women and children killed will almost certainly have to be revised upwards," the Foreign Office said.
Serbs continued to pack their bags and leave Pristina as refugees, some for the first time driving Albanian-registered cars, began to arrive. NATO has appealed to Albanians to report the names of people they suspect of involvement in war crimes to an office in the centre of the capital.