Evidence that Serb forces have begun mass killings of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo began to emerge yesterday, triggering fears that NATO bombings had prompted a backlash against the very people they were intended to help.
Refugees fleeing Kosovo to neighbouring Albania told aid workers the Serbs had machine-gunned 21 teachers, forcing their pupils to look on, when they burst into a school in the border village of Dobrune.
After the massacre, the 176 surviving villagers, including 96 children, were taken by Serb forces to a nearby border crossing point. They were told to walk into Albania, where they were found by Albanian troops and handed over to a refugee agency.
Serb forces meanwhile attacked Goden, a nearby village, from where flames and smoke rose throughout the day. Albanian sources say they have reports of the killing of up to 40 civilians by Serb paramilitaries in another village, Dela Cerkva, near the southern town of Suva Reka.
In the capital, Pristina, Serbs shot and killed the security guard of the main ethnic Albanian newspaper, Koha. The newspaper's editor and staff are now in hiding. A prominent Kosovo Albanian lawyer, Mr Bajram Kelmendi, and his two sons, one a teenager, were taken from their home by Serbs, murdered, and their bodies dumped in the town centre.
Mr Kelmendi's wife went in desperation to the police and was told: "Go and ask NATO, go look for them there."
Serb houses have been given large coloured stickers to place on their doors to distinguish them from Albanian homes, triggering fears of a widespread massacre.
Yesterday, the UN High Commission for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, said: "I have followed with dismay and deep anguish the developments on the ground that have occasioned massive violations of the right to life and have caused such human suffering." She urged maximum vigilance to protect human rights.
To do that, ground forces may be needed, say some observers. Military sources say that NATO does have a plan for inserting ground troops to avert a wholesale slaughter of Albanians.
That could involve paratroopers, drawn from units such as the US 82nd Airborne Division, which has a regiment in Italy, plus British, French and Belgian paratroopers, sent in by helicopter.
The operation is risky. The paratroopers would be landed in a fast operation, probably at Pristina's giant airbase south of the town, probably after annihilating air raids against Serb forces there, in the hope that speed would overcome the superior Serb numbers.
Politically though, this would amount to an escalation in the fighting; in effect an invasion, would probably be irreversible and might also mean allied casualties.