MACEDONIA/YUGOSLAVIA: A HEAVY GUNBATTLE ERUPTS BETWEEN MACEDONIA TROOPS AND ETHNIC ALBANIAN GUERRILLAS

Record ID: 377114

  • Title: MACEDONIA/YUGOSLAVIA: A HEAVY GUNBATTLE ERUPTS BETWEEN MACEDONIA TROOPS AND ETHNIC ALBANIAN GUERRILLAS
  • Date: 15th March 2001
  • Summary: TETOVA, MACEDONIA (MARCH 15, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. SLV MACEDONIAN TROOPS FIRED UPON IN STREET, TANK FIRES BACK 0.25 2. SV TANK FIRING, SOLDIER SHELTERING BEHIND VEHICLE 0.34 3. SLV/SV VARIOUS OF TROOP MOVEMENTS ON STREETS (5 SHOTS) 1.05 4. SLV SOLDIER RUNNING ALONG STREETS 1.13 5. MCU LOCAL RESIDENTS TALKING, LOOKI
  • Embargoed: 30th March 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: TETOVO, MACEDONIA/ BUJANOVAC AND YUGOSLAV/MACEDONIAN/KOSOVO BORDER JUNCTION, NEAR MIRATOVAC VILLAGE, YUGOSLAVIA
  • City:
  • Country: Yugoslavia
  • Reuters ID: LVACQK4PM5SSR6ANPOBK91H7KTWO
  • Story Text: Fierce exchanges of gunfire have been witnessed in the
    northwestern Macedonian town of Tetova.

    Meanwhile Yugoslav heavy weaponry was withdrawn from the
    Bujanovac area, according to the agreement signed on Monday by
    KFOR Commander Carlo Cabigiosi and the command of the
    Yugoslavian armed forces,
    Yugoslav army and security forces which on Wednesday moved
    into in the Kosovo demilitarised zone running along the
    southernmost tip of the buffer zone in Serbia,
    on the border with Kosovo and Macedonia were inspected by
    representatives from the European Union and KFOR.



    A heavy gunbattle erupted between Macedonian troops
    and ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the northwestern town of
    Tetovo on Thursday (March 15), the second day of violent
    clashes in the area.

    Reporters said well-armed Macedonian police opened fire
    with mortars and heavy machineguns mounted on armoured
    personnel carriers in the suburbs of Tetovo in the direction
    of a nearby mountain. Gunmen returned fire.

    Macedonian special units were using sniper rifles against
    targets in a forested area outside the city.

    Fighting near Tetovo, the main city of the ethnic Albanian
    community who make up a third of Macedonia's population, began
    on Wednesday, marking a spread of violence in northern areas
    bordering Serbia since last month.

    Macedonian authorities blamed Wednesday's fighting on some
    200 "terrorists" from ethnic Albanian Kosovo who crossed the
    high mountains on the border and occupied several villages.

    One civilian died on Wednesday and two were wounded, while
    15 Macedonian policemen, three of them ethnic Albanians, were
    hurt, officials said. There was no word on the rebels' losses.

    The violence has increased fears that inter-ethnic
    Macedonia, the only state to win its independence from
    Yugoslavia without war, could succumb to the chaos that has
    afflicted the rest of the Balkans for the last decade.

    Diplomats say the gunmen appear to be trying to radicalise
    Macedonia's ethnic Albanians, whose main political party is in
    the ruling coalition. It argues the guerrillas will undo the
    progress made in improving Albanian rights by peaceful means.

    Tense, heavily-armed Macedonian police blocked all roads
    leading up the mountains. Police were also guarding petrol
    stations on the road between Skopje and Tetovo.

    There was panic buying of petrol and food both in Tetovo
    and in the capital Skopje on Wednesday night, but it subsided
    on Wednesday and the denar currency was stable in the morning
    after a slight fall against the German mark on Wednesday.

    While heavy weaponry was returned into the barracks on
    Thursday (March 15), Yugoslav security forces continued their
    deployment in the buffer zone.

    The Yugoslav army pulled back tanks on Thursday (March 15)
    from an area close to ethnic Albanian guerrilla positions by
    the volatile Kosovo boundary, signalling its commitment to a
    NATO-brokered ceasefire agreement.

    Tanks were withdrawn from positions near the ethnic
    Albanian villages of Trnovac and Lucane in Serbia's tense
    Presevo valley, east of the UN-ruled Kosovo province, and
    pulled back to the Bujanovac barracks.

    A Yugoslav Army officer told Reuters earlier this week
    that there were less than 10 tanks in the area. Their
    withdrawal is part of a ceasefire agreement that took effect
    early on Tuesday.

    The tanks had been dug into positions late last year after
    four Serbian police officers were killed in an escalation of
    fighting in November.

    Hundreds of Yugoslav soldiers and police officers swept
    into a buffer zone next to the Kosovo boundary on Wednesday in
    a NATO-backed effort to clamp down on ethnic Albanian
    guerrillas.

    The soldiers, armed with automatic rifles and checking for
    landmines as they moved along dirt roads, deployed into a
    pocket of Serbian land on the southernmost tip of the buffer
    zone where it also touches on the border with Macedonia, 5km
    from the village of Miratovac.

    The deployment is part of a drive to cut any links between
    ethnic Albanian armed rebels who have been operating in
    Serbia's Presevo Valley for more than a year and a similar
    group which has emerged in Macedonia in the past few weeks.

    The guerrilla violence has prompted international fears
    that serious conflicts could erupt again in the volatile
    Balkans, just as many had hoped for a new era of peace after
    the downfall of Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic in October last
    year.

    European Union monitors and officers from Kosovo's
    NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force continued to check the
    deployment of the Yugolsav security forces.

    The guerrillas say they are protecting local ethnic
    Albanians from Serbian state persecution and that the region
    should have the right to join ethnic Albanian-dominated
    Kosovo.

    NATO worked closely with Yugoslav officers, their enemies
    in the Kosovo conflict only two years ago, in planning the
    deployment in an effort to reassure local ethnic Albanian
    civilians there would be no repeat of Milosevic-era
    repression.

    Macedonia is a new troublespot, although analysts have
    long predicted that the former Yugoslav republic's fragile
    population mix of two-thirds ethnic Macedonians to one third
    Albanians offered plenty of potential for instability.

    The spread of violence from the north to the west, where
    most ethnic Albanians in Macedonia live, is likely to further
    alarm major diplomatic powers and neighbours.

    Nipping the Macedonian violence in the bud was one of the
    main reasons behind NATO's decision to let Yugoslav forces
    into a 25 square km area at the bottom of the zone it declared
    around Kosovo when its peacekeepers moved into the province.





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