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Fighting Erupts in Macedonia as Peace Accord Signature Nears
TETOVO, Macedonia, Aug 11 (News Agencies) - Heavy fighting between Albanian activists and Macedonian government forces broke out Saturday in the suburbs of the northwestern flashpoint town of Tetovo, injuring two people, hospital sources said.
An AFP reporter at the scene said the fighting started at about 8 p.m. (1 p.m. EST) in the neighborhood of Recica in the southwest of the town, less than half a mile from the center.
Fighting was also reported around the municipal stadium, in the northern suburbs.
Hospital director Rahim Thaci said that a Macedonian policeman and an unidentified civilian had been injured in the fighting.
The new eruption comes less than two days before Macedonian and Muslim Albanian political leaders are due to sign a peace accord, finalized last Wednesday, aimed at preventing the troubled Balkan country slipping towards civil war.
Tetovo has been at the center of much of the fighting between the activists of the National Liberation Army (NLA) and government forces, since an insurgency was launched in February, bringing the Balkan country close to war.
Activists control some of the suburbs and are trying to push into parts of the town.
Earlier on Saturday, defense ministry spokesman Marjan Gjurovski told AFP that clashes had also broken out in the northern village of Radusa between Albanian activists, who had crossed the mountains from neighboring Kosovo, and Macedonian security forces.
He said Macedonian forces were responding "energetically" to the attacks, which started late on Friday, and that military helicopters had been sent in.
An official from Skopje's hospital, Zoran Spirovski, later said one policeman had been seriously injured in the fighting. National television said an uneasy calm had returned the area of Radusa late on Saturday.
The new fighting came as Macedonia held a day of mourning for eight soldiers killed a day earlier in a landmine blast when their supply truck ran over two anti-tank mines near the village of Ljubanci, about nine miles north of Skopje.
It was the second military burial in two days, after the funerals of 10 Macedonian soldiers killed on Wednesday in the deadliest attack by the activists thus far.
The recent fighting has cast doubts over whether the peace accord will be signed as scheduled on Monday.
The parties represented in parliament approved an outline agreement on Wednesday, but since then, the situation on the ground has deteriorated rapidly.
Several hundred Macedonian protestors tried to storm the U.S. embassy in Skopje late on Friday, in the latest expression of Macedonian resentment towards the West.
The Skopje government has regularly accused the West of indirectly helping the activists.
As the international community expressed concern at the fate of the peace deal on Friday, Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva sent a letter to NATO secretary general George Robertson and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana urging greater action against the activists.
"The patience and the threshold of tolerance of the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia have been brought to their limit," the letter said.
Macedonia's National Security Council met overnight and said in a statement it would "continue decisive action with the aim of eliminating the threats to the security forces and citizens of Macedonia."
The activists say they are fighting for minority rights for Muslim Albanians, who make up as much as one third of the country's population of two million people.
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