-tank mines along Kosova's borders with Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia in preparation for a ground war. One 23-year-old woman who crossed the border into Macedonia on Thursday said she had watched Serbian soldiers planting mines in her school at Ferizaj, 25 miles from Pristina. "The soldiers came to my village and I hid in a woodshed," Albona Saliu said at the Brazda refugee camp yesterday. "I saw them planting mines in the school and in the houses. The soldiers found me the next day and forced me on to a train to the border." Rrushi Ricica, 49, an ethnic Albanian who was turned back from the Macedonian border and forced to return to her home in Pristina, said the Serb soldiers had warned her to "keep to the main roads to avoid the mines. As I drove back to Pristina I could see them laying mines along the tracks and in the fields." Other refugees said they had fled into Kosova's mountain forests to avoid mines after they had seen Serbian troops laying mines on roads around their villages. "We saw them planting mines in the fields near our homes," said Shefket Maurtezani, 63, who was forced to abandon his home five miles from the Macedonian border when the Serbs opened fire in the village. Ethnic Albanian refugees arriving in Albania last week said the Serbs were forcing Kosova Albanians, who had been taken prisoner, to plant mines along the border. Nato's 14,000-strong force in Macedonia includes British combat engineers and bomb disposal engineers ready to deal with the mines along the border in the event of a peace agreement or a ground war. "I think we are going to be very busy whatever happens," said Captain Verity Orrell-Jones, the Royal Engineers bomb disposal officer. "To put mines in people's homes or fields is a despicable thing to do." The captain said it would be "an enormous task" to find and explode all the mines laid by the Serbs. "Our aim will be to check every area before the refugees are allowed to return or before our ground troops are allowed in.If the refugees come back in their t
ens of thousands before we get there we could end up with a lot of people killed or suffering terrible injuries." The mines used by the Serbs include small anti-personnel devices. They are circular - the size and shape of a tin of shoe polish - or rectangular and about the size of a Filofax, and can kill or seriously injure anybody who steps on them. More lethal are the PMR-2 and PMR-3 "stake mines", so-called because they are placed on a stake above the ground and are triggered by a trip-wire. They can kill anybody within 20 metres and can seriously injure within a radius of 75 metres. But the most lethal anti-personnel mine is the PROM-1, a sophisticated jumping device that contains two charges, the first to blow the mine a metre into the air and the second which explodes over a wider radius than even the PMR mines. The International Red Cross said it deplored the use of landmines in Kosova or anywhere else: "All over the world we have seen the appalling effects of these lethal weapons." The Serbs hav
e used more than 60 types of landmines in recent years, according to the UN. A Defence Ministry spokesman in London said: "Most of the mines are low-tech but are no less lethal than more sophisticated systems. Recent experience world-wide has shown that such 'dumb' mines - most of them without warning signs - will cause a significant humanitarian problem for many years to come." Last month 134 countries signed the Ottawa anti-landmine treaty outlawing anti-personnel mines but the main producers, including Russi
