ALBANIA: SEVERAL THOUSADNS REFUGEES STREAM INTO ALBANIA AFTER YUGOSLAVIA REOPENS ITS MAIN BORDER CROSSING FROM KOSOVO

Record ID: 274747

  • Title: ALBANIA: SEVERAL THOUSADNS REFUGEES STREAM INTO ALBANIA AFTER YUGOSLAVIA REOPENS ITS MAIN BORDER CROSSING FROM KOSOVO
  • Date: 11th April 1999
  • Summary: MORINA, ALBANIA-KOSOVO BORDER CROSSING, ALBANIA (APRIL 10, 1999) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. LV/SLV OF REFUGEES IN CARS AND ON TRACTORS WAITING TO CROSS THE BORDER (2 SHOTS) 0.19 2. SV POLICE AT CHECKPOINT (2 SHOTS) 0.27 3. SLV QUEUE OF CARS AT BORDER 0.41 4. SV OF POLICEMAN WATCHING 0.46 5. SV FLAGS PAN TO REFUGEES ON TRACTOR 1
  • Embargoed: 26th April 1999 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MORINA, ALBANIA-KOSOVO BORDER, ALBANIA
  • Country: Albania
  • Reuters ID: LVA9C9DV897FKZPTATXF4I35UNRW
  • Story Text: Several thousand refugees have streamed into northern
    Albania for a second night after Yugoslavia reopened its main
    border crossing from Kosovo.

    The refugees arrived at the border crossing to Albania
    by any means at their disposal - by car, bus, tractor or on
    foot.

    The latest deportees appeared to be victims of a Serb
    policy of selective expulsion rather than the start of a new
    flood into neighbouring countries.

    They were from two adjacent villages about 120 km (75
    miles) north of the frontier, from the same part of Kosovo as
    the refugees who arrived on Friday night.

    Hundreds of thousands have been driven out of the
    province since Serb forces intensified a brutal campaign of
    ethnic dispossession against Kosovo Albanians in response to a
    NATO bombing campaign launched on March 24.

    In their half-day journey to the south, the latest wave of
    refugees said they travelled a route strewn with burned-out
    homes and dead livestock.

    They said all the villages they passed through were
    empty - lending credence to claims by NATO leaders that
    Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic has been systematically
    depopulating Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian majority.

    Refugees reported seeing Serb tanks taking up hiding
    places in the ruins of abandoned homes, an apparent effort to
    camouflage themselves from NATO warplanes hunting Serb armour.

    Those arriving on Saturday gave a now-familiar account
    of how Serb forces besieged their villages, ordered them out
    of their homes, stripped them of cash and valuables and herded
    them to the border.

    At the main border crossing at Morina -- about 250 km
    (155 miles) northeast of Tirana - relief workers were on hand
    to meet the new arrivals.


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