Satellite images bear out refugee accounts of atrocities

The US has satellite images showing evidence of mass graves in the southwestern Kosovan village of Orahovac, ABC television said…

The US has satellite images showing evidence of mass graves in the southwestern Kosovan village of Orahovac, ABC television said at the weekend.

The roughly 100 graves, which had been recently covered, were in two straight rows and were similar to the mass graves found after the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ABC reported.

The images corroborated refugee Albanian reports of mass executions in Kosovo, ABC added.

The Pentagon in Washington did not release the images. But in Brussels the NATO military spokesman, Col Konrad Freytag, showed an aerial photograph dated Friday last, April 9th, which he said showed freshly turned earth that might indicate a mass grave at Orahovac.

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However, Col Freytag added this could not be confirmed.

US military has been using satellite images, some detailed enough to show the licence plates on a car, to track both troop and civilian movements in the embattled region.

As many as 100,000 missing Kosovan men may have been massacred, it emerged today as senior British officials told of refugee camps almost devoid of males.

In London staff at the British Department for International Development who have just returned from camps in Macedonia and Albania said refugees had told them of their men being taken away forcibly by Serbian forces.

"Many of them were describing, for example, whole communities and villages who were told to leave, with them being put on either buses or trains, and then the men were siphoned off," said one senior official.

"The women feel extremely apprehensive. They feel the worst in many cases."

The officials said they would normally expect some 35 per cent of refugees to be men, but among Kosovans fleeing the Serbs the figure was sometimes as low as 10 per cent.

Of a total of some 500,000 refugees in the camps in Albania and Macedonia, there were some 100,000 fewer men than might have been expected in normal circumstances.

The officials said up to 500,000 people were displaced within Kosovo, and aid agencies had no idea of how many were men.

Other fears are that the men of fighting age have been rounded up and are being detained or have been killed by the Serbs.

The British officials made it clear that while Britain was prepared to take "some thousands" of refugees, "the overwhelming proportion of refugees will need to be looked after in the region".

Britain would only take those who wanted to come, possibly to be reunited with family members already there.

There was no prospect of any of them coming in the next few days, because there was no system in Macedonia and Albania for processing refugees and finding out who wanted to come to Britain.

"Voluntary departures are an absolute requirement," one official said.

Numbers involved meant the Home Office should have little problem finding accommodation for them, he added.

Up to 400,000 refugees are hiding from Serb troops in the mountains of Kosovo, the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, said yesterday.

After talking by phone to a spokesman for the Kosovo Liberation Army, Mr Cook said: "He believes that there are some 400,000 living in the mountains and woods hiding from the Serbs who would otherwise kill or deport them."

Germany is setting up a register of Kosovo atrocities, collecting photographs of villages and gathering accounts from refugees that could be used in court, the German Defence Minister, Mr Walter Kolbow, said in Bonn.

German officers have begun questioning refugees, particularly in Macedonia, on their flight from the province in the wake of a Serbian offensive.

Mr Kolbow said the testimony could serve as evidence in a court trying war crimes committed in Kosovo.

The deputy military Chief-of-Staff, Gen Hans Frank, showed journalists photographs of seven destroyed villages taken during reconnaissance missions.

Mr Kolbow said the register will seek to document the fate of some 200 villages in Kosovo.