Shock etched in their faces, ethnic Albanians fleeing the violence in Kosovo province yesterday gave weeping first-hand accounts of a major Serb offensive against separatists that is quickly turning into another all-out civil war in former Yugoslavia.
Trekking over the mountains for up to two days, refugees joining the growing exodus to neighbouring Albania described artillery bombardments and house burning they said were clearly intended to drive them out.
More than 50,000 people have fled from their homes in Kosovo province, the office of the UN High Commissioner of Refugees said yesterday. Some 3,700 crossed into Albania while up to 6,000 have sought shelter in Montenegro, the agency said. "The UNHCR estimates that there are some 42,000 displaced persons who have left their homes but have not left the province, while 3,700 arrived in northern Albania," Mr Mons Nyberg, of the UNHCR said.
"It's ethnic cleansing, and it's done the same way as in Bosnia," said Mr Ukshin Maliqi (35), comparing the situation in Kosovo with practices in neighbouring Bosnia during that three-year war.
"They shell first so that we abandon our houses, then they burn them so that we cannot return," he said.
The accounts provide the most detailed information yet about the scope of the campaign started in late May by Serb police and army forces, who are trying to crush the pro-independence Kosovo Liberation Army. The militants have been gaining in popularity and numbers after years of heavy-handed rule by Serbian authorities in the southern province, where ethnic Albanians comprise 90 per cent of the population of 2.2 million.
There have been no reports of massive civilian roundups or massacres in the Kosovo conflict. But attacks on villages, the exodus of civilians and the deaths of women and children among the casualties - more than 200 people have been killed in the last three months - have prompted increasing comparisons to the ethnic war in Bosnia and its atrocities.
US President, Mr Clinton, told a visiting delegation of ethnic Albanians in Washington last week that, by their account, "the United States shall not tolerate another Bosnia in Kosovo".
But the West, which has failed in repeated attempts to get the Yugoslav president, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, to stop the campaign in Kosovo, has yet to devise a strategy to resolve the worsening conflict.
A NATO official in Brussels, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the alliance was "preoccupied" with Kosovo.
"There is a sense of urgency about this, but it's also important to base what we do on sound military analysis," he said. "You can't improvise military response, you can't throw troops at problems."
Based on information from the refugees and ethnic Albanian officials in Kosovo, the latest campaign is focused on the western region of Decani, where Serbs have deployed thousands of additional paramilitary forces and are pulverising 10 towns and villages with artillery.
The town of Decani, once with a population of about 20,000, is in ruins with no sign of life, according to the pro-Albanian Kosovo Information Centre. Dead cattle litter the streets, it said.
While the Kosovo Liberation Army controls as much as a third of the province, several refugees said they saw no sign of it in the sealed-off area under siege by Serb forces.
"When the shelling started we ran to the woods, waiting for it to stop," said Ms Nise Mazrekaj (27), from the village of Slup. "But then the Serbs set the houses on fire, so we couldn't go back."
Her young three children were crying and hungry after an overnight mountain journey. Other refugees were stretched out on the grass asleep, exhausted from their trip.
The Serb attacks appear to have intensified over the weekend, judging by the stream of refugees to Albania that began on Sunday morning. UN officials said 1,000 refugees had registered, but the figure is believed to be much higher because many refuse to register.
Serb authorities said appeals had been broadcast by radio to residents of Decani and several villages to return, guaranteeing their safety as long as they do not participate in "terrorist activities".