NATO troops would be withdrawing from the Macedonian refugee camps within days, a spokesman said yesterday. Maj Eric Mongnot told a press conference in Skopje that the alliance had already transferred responsibility for the Bojane camp, near Tetovo, to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The transfer of responsibility for the Stankovic camp, near Skopje, would be completed "within the next few days", he said. At Brazda , also near Skopje, responsibility for the distribution of food and water had already been transferred to Oxfam, with medical care being run by Medecins Sans Frontieres, he said. Security at the camps had always been the responsibility of the Macedonian police, he said. He was unaware of reports that a refugee had been beaten up by the police.
Ms Paula Ghedini of the UNHCR said that the camps would not be under the jurisdiction of the Macedonian government. "We surely will be the ones running them."
Over the weekend 381 refugees had entered Macedonia from Kosovo, 81 of them through the Blace crossing. All were staying with host families in Macedonia, Ms Ghedini said.
So far, 310,000 Kosovan refugees had fled to Albania, 120,000 to Macedonia (105,000 of whom are still there), 63,000 to Montenegro, and 27,000 to Bosnia, she said.
She said that UNHCR was aware that residents of 300 Serb villages in Kosovo had been "internally displaced" recently. She had no knowledge of a claim by doctors at a hospital in Pristina that, of 400 patients in the hospital, the great majority had been injured by NATO bombs.
Yesterday a mother and child trying to escape from Kosovo were found frozen to death on the Sharah mountain, near the Macedonian town of Tetovo.
The Irish aid agency GOAL succeeded in landing a 161/2-tonne load of relief supplies in Tirana yesterday, 48 hours after it left Dublin. The aid plane, which was struck by lightening over the Albanian capital on Saturday and forced to divert, finally touched down at about 7.30 a.m. Two UNHCR helicopters took the load to Kukes, where Goal operations are centred.
