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Albanian Rebels Abandon Macedonian HQ
SELCE, Macedonia, March 26 (News Agencies) - Ethnic Albanian rebels on Monday have abandoned their headquarters set up in this village in the hills of northwest Macedonia a day after a government offensive began.
But Macedonian security forces have not entered the village, which lies empty apart from two elderly civilians and a few dogs and farm animals.
Reporters who visited Selce before Sunday's Macedonian offensive found a thriving community of some 3,000 ethnic Albanians and a strong contingent of rebels, who described the village as their headquarters.
But a day after the assault, a 79-year-old man walking alone in the village, two miles (three kilometers) northwest of Tetovo, said that the civilians had left late on Sunday, in the direction of the Kosovo border.
Other local people told reporters that the fighters had left overnight.
In the streets of the village lay a number of abandoned weapons, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but they appeared to have been deliberately left in a prominent place and may have been booby trapped in order to injure advancing forces.
In Skopje, Colonel Blagoja Markovski of the Macedonian army, told reporters that soldiers "do not enter villages."
"This is not our aim, the army is only active in destroying terrorists ... after we clear the ground around the villages, the police check the area and assist the population to evacuate or to come back," he said.
On Sunday, Macedonian security forces launched a ground offensive to dislodge rebels of the National Liberation Army (NLA) from the hills above the frontline town of Tetovo.
They managed to drive the rebels out of the villages of Lavce and Gajre on hills over Tetovo after the launching the largest artillery barrage since fighting broke out on the outskirts of the town on March 13th.
But further into the high ground their offensive died out Monday, as troops continued to launch occasional volleys of mortar bombs onto the slopes around Selce and into the hills surrounding a steep ravine leaving north from Tetovo.
At least two shells exploded in the woods above Selce while AFP was in the village, but most appeared to be aimed at the routes approaching the larger village of Sipkovica, which is still thought to be in rebel hands.
The bombardment has caused extensive damage in the formerly prosperous farming village.
Windows are smashed, several mortar shell detonation marks are visible, at least one building has been hit by machine gun fire and a blood trail leads up one street. Sheep and cattle wander unattended through the narrow cobbled streets, and heavy iron gates swing in the wind.
In Tetovo itself, tensions were high, but more shops and cafes have opened since the government offensive drove rebels from the ridges immediately over the town and civilians have begun to circulate more freely.
The special police who led the offensive were still in an aggressive mood however, angrily signaling people away from their sandbagged positions. Two jeep-loads of journalists were briefly detained in the town's main barracks but released without charge.
Meanwhile, about 500 civilians arrived overnight in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren after 12-hour long march over the Sar mountains, saying they had fled the "war" in the Tetovo region.
"Around 500 people have arrived since this morning, and according to them, hundreds more are on their way," the head of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Prizren, Semih Bulbul, said.
"It is a true war zone," said one refugee in Prizren.
"Selce was bombed for six hours yesterday. We just took the children and left immediately," he added, but said he did not know how many civilians were injured.
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