Five people, all apparently ethnic Albanians, were yesterday reported killed in Kosovo and observers said tensions remained high in an area where fighting raged for four days last week.
In Brussels, meanwhile, NATO warned that its forces were ready to intervene at any time if fighting threatened the "fragile" truce which sources in Kosovo said was holding yesterday.
The rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army said last Thursday they had suspended the October 8th ceasefire, in response to the attack by the Serb police and army on the rebels' positions in northern Kosovo.
"Nothing has changed," their political representative, Mr Adem Demaci, said yesterday.
"The KLA will respect its decision [taken in October] to give a chance to a political solution, but it will always respond to any attack by Serb forces," Mr Demaci said.
NATO said in a statement that October's activation order, needed for strikes to be carried out, was still in place.
It was this activation order, backed by a mobilisation of NATO forces, that pushed the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, into agreeing to the ceasefire.
Fighting flared again last week in the north of Kosovo where Serbian troops and police launched a sweeping operation against KLA strongholds after a number of Serbs, including a policeman, had been gunned down.
The four days of fighting left 15 dead on the ethnic Albanian side, while one Serb was killed and six others injured.
Various sources in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, have confirmed there was no fighting in northern Kosovo. But the rivals seemed to be spoiling for a fight as they accused each other of provoking the conflict last week.
The Kosovo Albanian Information Centre (KIC) reported yesterday that bodies of two unidentified civilians were found in the northern Kosovo town of Kosovska Mitrovica, giving no details about the victims.
The KIC said the "shooting" was heard late on Monday in the town, adding that the police "blocked" the spot where the two victims were found.
This report could not be independently confirmed.
Three gypsies were killed by KLA fighters late on Sunday in Kosovska Mitrovica, according to the Serb-run Information Centre.
Meanwhile, in a letter to the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, the Yugoslav Foreign Minister, Mr Zivadin Jovanovic, said that only "clear condemnation of terrorism and putting the KLA on the list of terrorist organisations" could lead to a political solution of the crisis.
As ethnic Albanian politicians "refuse a dialogue", the KLA "terrorists step up their criminal activities, kidnapping and killing innocent civilians and officials . . . [moves] that cannot be tolerated by state" institutions, according to the state agency, Tanjug, in Belgrade, which quoted from the minister's letter.
Mr Jovanovic said UN Security Council resolutions 1199 and 1160 condemned "all foreign aid to terrorism in Kosovo", charging that they were "grossly violated" with the KLA receiving Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
Belgrade said that since the October 13th accord reached between Mr Milosevic and the US envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke, there had been 22 attempts of infiltration in Kosovo by armed groups from Albania.
It also said 290 people were kidnapped this year by Kosovo rebels. Thirty-one of them were killed, 117 managed to escape or were released, while the fate of the remaining 142 was unknown. In Podujevo, the Serbs, who make up only 10 per cent of the 20,000 strong population of this northern town which was the scene of last week's fighting, sent a letter to Mr Milosevic, urging him to "take all the measures" to protect them from the KLA.
Meanwhile, a French foreign ministry spokeswoman said yesterday that an upsurge in violence in Kosovo should not jeopardise the deployment of OSCE verifiers, whose "security constitutes a major concern". "The tragic events in Kosovo at the weekend do not threaten the deployment of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) for now," Ms Anne Gazeau-Secret said.
The OSCE is deploying 2,000 unarmed observers in Kosovo to monitor the October ceasefire. "We hope that this (OSCE) deployment will be able to go ahead in the best conditions because the mission's presence and action seem essential to us considering the current situation," Ms Gazeau-Secret said.
She added that the situation "risks deteriorating even further if the presence of the verifiers and the successful completion of their mission are threatened."