http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=224738&section=default

Albanians Flee Tense Serbian Boundary Area

Nov 28, 2000 -- (Reuters) Hundreds of people poured across the boundary
from Serbia to Kosovo on Monday to escape any renewal of last week's fighting
between Serb police and ethnic Albanian guerrillas, the U.N. refugee agency
said.

A spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) said around 200 cars carrying about 800 people had passed one
boundary crossing from a largely ethnic Albanian area of Serbia into Kosovo on
Monday.

"Also, taxis were bringing people from the Presevo and Bujanovac area," she told
Reuters, referring to municipalities inside Serbia proper with a large ethnic
Albanian population.

The influx followed the arrival of about 1,600 people at two boundary crossings
to Kosovo on Sunday, spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort said.

Macedonian border officials, meanwhile, said about 500 of the refugees from
Presevo and Bujanovac entered Macedonia over the weekend.

"The Yugoslav citizens, of mostly ethnic-Albanian origin, have stated that the
main
reason for their travel into Macedonia is the concentration of military troops
in the
Southern region of Serbia," the government's border agency said in a statement.

Agency officials said the army and police had stepped up security measures along
Macedonia's northern border with the Kosovo province. Macedonia was flooded
by tens of thousands of refugees during the Kosovo crisis last year.

Four Serbian policemen were killed early last week by members of an ethnic
Albanian guerrilla group operating in the remote region in Serbia proper close
to
the Kosovo boundary.

Serbia said last week it would send police reinforcements into a five km (three
mile) wide buffer zone next to the Kosovo boundary if NATO troops in the
province had not stamped out the guerrilla attacks by Monday evening.

DEADLINE SPARKS FEAR

Many of those entering Kosovo on Sunday said they feared what would happen
when the deadline expired at 1800 GMT on Monday, van Genderen Stort said.
There were no immediate reports of any fighting immediately after the deadline.

Serbian authorities have placed extra personnel and weapons close to the zone
which runs along the boundary with Kosovo, a de facto international protectorate
after last year's NATO bombing campaign.

"Persons crossing into Kosovo stated that the Serbian military build-up
continued...and people feared attack," van Genderen Stort told reporters in the
Kosovo capital Pristina.

The guerrilla group, operating in the security zone inside Serbia proper, says
it is
defending the local population against Serb police harassment.

A spokesman for the group's political wing said on Monday that it had agreed to
extend a weekend ceasefire until Friday.

Van Genderen Stort said a group of ethnic Albanians was reported to be fleeing
the ethnically mixed villages of Nazalce and Ozlare, with a combined population
of under 3,000. "Reports indicate that these villages are practically empty
apart
from some elderly and younger men," she said.

Refugees said another village, Letonice, was also empty after local Serbs
advised
ethnic Albanians to leave, she said.

But "some people who wanted to leave were not allowed to leave by the Serbian
police at the checkpoint because of (problems with) their ID documents and they
were turned back."

She said there were reports of Serbs leaving the Presevo Valley, another area
inside Serbia bordering Kosovo. She did not elaborate, but local Serbs have
expressed fears about new outbreaks of violence after last week's clashes in the
region.