The New York Times

Monday, June 14, 1999

RUBBLE

Kosovo Insurgents Retake a Wrecked Stronghold

By STEVEN ERLANGER

SUVA REKA, Kosovo -- This is the most ruined town in Kosovo, a city of Albanians where, before this war began in late March, the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army was strong and Serbian police rarely entered.

Armed troops of the Kosovo Liberation Army were back in Suva Reka Sunday, in their uniforms, watching the mass exodus of Serbs and the entrance of Italian NATO troops who are supposed to demilitarize the Kosovar force.

But the town itself, which once had 12,000 inhabitants, is empty. Nearly every building has been looted and burned; few panes of glass are unbroken. Brick walls have holes from artillery and anti-aircraft shells. The bus station is a ruin, the buses vandalized and pocked with bullet holes. Wrecked and burned cars line the side of the road, along with spent rifle cartridges.

There has been sniping in Suva Reka throughout the war, where the rebels resisted the Serbian army and police and held out in the steep hills around here and Jezerce nearby. Few civilian cars have passed this way during the war, and in this interim period when Yugoslav authority is rapidly receding and NATO peacekeeping troops have not yet established theirs, Suva Reka remains a dangerous place.

There was a report that snipers fired on fleeing Serbs in Suva Reka Sunday, but that report could not be confirmed. Two German journalists were shot, one killed and one badly wounded, on this same road, near Stimlje.

When a foreign reporter pulled his car off the road in the center of town, a group of Kosovo Liberation Army troops emerged from a building 200 yards away and watched, their guns ready.

Then an Albanian man in dirty clothes and broken shoes ran toward the car. Musli Kuci, 49, said he had just returned Saturday night to Suva Reka after hiding from the Serbs for three months in the surrounding hills.

"There are only a few of us here," he said nervously, "maybe 200 civilians have come." Many fled abroad, he said. "It will be horrible for them to see when they return."

"Most of those in Suva Reka now are very old or sick," Kuci said.

"The KLA is all around," he said. "They took the town and they came to protect what is left." There is not much, in truth, to protect.

Asked about the Serbs who are leaving, Kuci said he wanted the innocent to stay. "I came out to the road to tell the Serbs to stay," he said. "But they did not want to stop and talk to me. They just kept going. They were afraid, I know they were afraid of the KLA."

Kuci looked around again, toward the Kosovar troops. "They have been careful of the Serbs passing by this road," he said. "I know they are afraid. But we're not that kind of people."