http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=201511

Three Ethnic Albanian Rebels Killed in Serbia

DOBROSIN, Yugoslavia, Sep 21, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Three ethnic
Albanian separatist guerrillas have been killed in southern Serbia, a U.S.
soldier who saw their bullet-riddled bodies transported into Kosovo told AFP
Wednesday.

The soldier, stationed with the KFOR peacekeeping force at a Kosovo border post
300 yards (meters) from the rebel held village of Dobrosin in Serbia, said the
fighters were thought to have been killed in clashes with Yugoslav security
forces Tuesday.

"We heard bursts of automatic fire which lasted a few minutes," the soldier, who
asked not to be named, said.

The fighting was between the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac
(UCPMB) -- a guerrilla force seeking the independence of three majority Albanian
municipalities from Serbia -- and Yugoslav troops, according to Kosovo Albanian
press reports.


A resident of Dobrosin told AFP that the fighting broke out at dawn on Tuesday
when around 100 Serbian paramilitary police attempted to enter the village, the
UCPMB's main base.

At around midday (1000 GMT) Wednesday a truck carrying the corpses of three men
in military fatigues who had clearly been shot many times, passed through the
KFOR checkpoint leading into Kosovo, the US soldier said.

The UCPMB made its first public appearance in January this year, declaring its
aim to "liberate" the Presevo area -- which it calls "Eastern Kosovo" -- with
the eventual goal of uniting it with an independent Kosovo.

The group now holds Dobrosin and is believed to control a six mile (10
kilometer) long front protecting a pocket of territory on the Kosovo border.

At the guerrillas' first ever press conference in Dobrosin on Sunday Behxhet
Mehmeti, one of the group's commanders, told reporters that Serbian forces were
massing near rebel positions and preparing an attack.

Since Sunday the rebels have erected a checkpoint manned by two fighters armed
with a Kalashnikov assault rifle on the outskirts of Dobrosin.

"Warning: Military Zone," reads a sign by the checkpoint

"Many fighters are currently on a state of alert," said one of the fighters,
wearing a camouflage cap with the UCPMB's red, black and gold logo.

The fighters told reporters that two of the fighters were to be buried in the
southwestern Kosovo town of Prizren.

In Kosovo the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fought a 1998-1999 guerrilla war
against Yugoslavian forces, which was brought to an end last June by the arrival
of the KFOR peacekeeping force.

The UCPMB, thought by international observers to number between 60 and 300 men,
includes former KLA fighters but Mehmeti denied Sunday it was linked to any
single political group within Kosovo or that it received funding from abroad.



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