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Fighting Rages In Macedonia
VAKSINCE, Macedonia, May 26 (News Agencies) - Macedonian forces launched fresh artillery and helicopter strikes Saturday against rebel-held villages, increasing fears for thousands of civilians trapped by the fighting.
The army was not able to repeat its success of Friday, when two villages fell to its offensive, and was forced to call off its attacks at nightfall out of concern for the villagers, whom officials claimed were being held hostage.
"Military operations have been suspended for today. Our principal objective is to create the conditions for the civilians to be evacuated, not to deal with the terrorists," army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski said.
As police special forces secured the government's shaky hold on the abandoned villages of Vaksince and Lojane, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery pounded Slupcane, a rebel stronghold in the hills north of Skopje.
Police arrived in the two captured villages late Friday to find that the Muslim Albanian rebels who had held them since May 3rd had escaped, disappearing soon after 3,000 civilians fled the zone.
A rebel leader told AFP by telephone that they still held positions in the foothills of the Black Mountains of Skopje above Vaksince and that they were ready to defend Slupcane, which had also been vacated by civilians.
"It is only us left in Slupcane, we can defend ourselves," he said.
But Skopje claimed that some civilians were left in the village and that the rebels were holding them there as "human shields" in a bid to thwart the assault.
Markovski said that civilians trapped in Slupcane had telephoned officials to ask to be evacuated.
"We called out through loud-speakers for the civilians to come out, but we received a second telephone call telling us that the terrorists were threatening those who wanted to come out at gunpoint," he said.
The evacuation of Vaksince and Lojane only came as the rebels were preparing to abandon their positions to the advancing army.
"At the moment our operation to evacuate civilians cannot go forward. The situation is complicated because we don't know how many people are being kept hostage," defense ministry spokesman Georgi Trendafilov said.
Earlier, two Macedonian army Mi-24 helicopter gunships flew in low over Slupcane and launched a salvo of missiles at the village.
Slupcane has been the target of repeated government artillery, tank and helicopter bombardments since May 3rd, when the National Liberation Army (NLA) seized the village in the name of their fight for increased rights for Macedonia's Muslim Albanian minority.
An official of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Annick Bouvier, said the organization had received calls reporting that thousands of civilians had fled Slupcane and nearby villages for the rebel-held village of Lipkovo.
"We don't know what the situation is in Slupcane, we have no access to the zone because of the military activity, but we are very worried about the situation of the exposed people," she said.
Smoke rose from the village and houses were ablaze on hills nearby after another morning of artillery attacks from government positions on the rolling farmland east of Slupcane, which is nestled at the foot of the mountains.
Homes in Vaksince were also shelled during the offensive, and now lie abandoned apart from police patrols gingerly searching the ruins.
The red roofs of homes at the front of the village have been smashed, and abandoned weapons lie around bunkers and trenches linking sandbagged buildings once used as firing points.
"We control the village," said a policeman stationed at the entry to the village with 20 well-armed comrades wearing body-armor and helmets.
"But we've not been everywhere. Special forces are searching the village, house by house."
After more than two months of sporadic skirmishing with government forces in Macedonia's northern hills, the NLA arrived in force, seizing a dozen villages in a 400 square kilometer (150 square mile) swathe of territory starting 25 kilometers (16 miles) north of the capital.
Fearing that Macedonia would become the latest Balkan republic to descend into a savage round of ethnic conflict, a series of high-level U.S., NATO ad EU envoys urged Skopje to deal with the problem politically, isolating the armed elements.
A government of national unity, including two Muslim Albanian parties, was formed, but it immediately began to look shaky as Albanian politicians continued to demand an end to the military offensive against the rebels.
The crisis came to a head when it was revealed that the two Albanian party leaders had signed an accord on "common action" with the NLA's political wing, and Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski accused them of "joining a terrorist organization".
At the weekend, fierce discussion was still going on within the coalition, which western observers warn could fall apart and hasten Macedonia's slide into all-out civil strife.
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