The New York Times
Thursday, June 17, 1999
U.K. Official: Serbs Killed 10,000
By The Associated Press
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Gruesome accounts of almost routine torture and death emerged in Kosovo today, and a British official estimated that Serb forces killed more than 10,000 people during two months of war and ethnic violence.
Serbian civilians frantically followed Serb soldiers retreating from the province, and tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians streamed back into their homeland from refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia.
Officials from Moscow and Washington met in Finland to try to resolve the role of Russian peacekeepers in Kosovo. Moscow is insisting on a separate sector for its peacekeepers; NATO says that won't happen though President Clinton predicted a ``successful conclusion.''
At least 10,000 ethnic Albanians -- and probably many more -- were killed by Serbs in more than 100 massacres even while NATO bombed Yugoslavia during the 78-day air campaign that ended last week, the British foreign office said.
``Tragically, our estimates of the numbers of innocent men, women and children killed will almost certainly have to be revised upwards,'' Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon said in London.
He said it was hard to believe ``that our fellow human beings could be guilty of machine-gunning children, systematic rape of young women and girls, digging mass graves and burning bodies to try to conceal the evidence of murder.
``But this all happened in Kosovo,'' Hoon said.
Survivors of the Serb atrocities that started with a crackdown in February 1998 and continued even after NATO airstrikes began March 24 flooded into the open.
``Hundreds of starving internally displaced people came down from hills near Serbka on 15 June, yesterday, when they spotted Western journalists. They were unaware that NATO had entered the province until they were informed by the journalists,'' NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said today.
``And on 14 June, a four-truck convoy sent by the World Food Program managed to reach 20,000 internally displaced persons hiding in the hills west of Pristina near Glogovac, and they were greeted by internally displaced persons coming out of the woods.''
As Serbs straggle out of Kosovo and ethnic Albanians rush in, allied troops face a tricky dilemma: demilitarizing the Kosovo rebels, heroes to many of the refugees.
The Russians, who have historic and cultural ties to the Serbs, are pressuring NATO troops to dismantle the rebel army.
Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergey Lavrov, said NATO forces were being too ``complacent'' about the demilitarization.
U.S. Marines had some tense moments with rebels Wednesday in southeastern Kosovo. NATO had to threaten force, including sending in Cobra attack helicopters, before 117 rebels near Vladovo surrendered their weapons.
Some 26,000 refugees have flooded back into Kosovo this week, but the security situation remains too precarious for organized returns by bus, the U.N. refugee agency said today.
Land mines that have killed at least two and injured several who've strayed off marked areas are among the problems.
In refugee camps in the northern Albanian town of Kukes, UNICEF launched a mine awareness campaign, distributing leaflets and posters warning of the danger of mines.
But with up to 17,000 refugees returning to Kosovo every day -- no one knows exactly since officials have given up counting -- Kukes, which now shelters about 80,000 refugees, could be empty in a week. Some 860,000 refugees fled Kosovo beginning in March.
``It's difficult to educate the kids about the danger of the mines. They like to run around and play everywhere,'' said Alfonso Artico, a UNICEF spokesman.
NATO forces, Albanian policemen and Kosovo rebels struggled to control the thousands of refugees lining up today in battered trucks and tractors to go home, while international aid agencies urged the refugees to wait a few more days.
German troops were letting Kosovo Liberation Army rebels take their weapons with them, and rebel officials were helping them determine whether Albanian looters were mixed in with the crossing refugees.
NATO forces appeared unprepared to deal with the flood of desperate people. At one point, a Danish policewoman shouted in English at cars and tractors crossing into the lefthand lane: ``Stay on this side of the road!''
In northern Kosovo, Yugoslav soldiers crammed into trucks and buses and even hitchhiked to get out. Serb civilians followed, convinced the rebels would take revenge.
Lt. Col. Robin Clifford, a spokesman for the allied force, said 26,000 of the 40,000 or so Serb troops in Kosovo had left. Under the peace accord that ended the NATO campaign, all Serb forces are to be out of the province by Sunday night, and allied officials say the pullout is proceeding well.
In Helsinki, Russian and U.S. officials met today to hammer out the role of Russian peacekeepers in Kosovo. Some 200-300 Russian troops took control of Pristina's airport Saturday ahead of NATO forces.
Meanwhile, new evidence emerged of Serb atrocities.
Serb police slaughtered 62 ethnic Albanians -- most of them women and children from an extended family -- by herding them into a room, tossing in a grenade and spraying survivors with machine-gun fire, villagers said today.
The April 17 massacre in Poklek, 20 miles west of Pristina, came to light as the first NATO troops moved into the area.
In Bruznik, central Kosovo, journalists were shown raw earth marked with wooden stakes and paper tags numbered one to 60.
In Berisht, just north of Pristina, residents said a shallow grave held the bodies of at least 60 people.
Hoon said NATO troops today also discovered an apparent torture chamber in the headquarters of the Serb military police in Pristina.
The five-story concrete building contained knives, rubber and wooden batons, baseball bats, brass knuckles, and ``savage pornography,'' he said.
Journalists taken to the building said one room, where Kosovo Albanian women were allegedly raped, held boxes of condoms.
The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal will send its first team of investigators into Kosovo on Friday.
