Fighting resumes near Macedonia’s second city
Explosions shook the hills above Tetovo today, marking the resumption of fighting between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the army near Macedonia’s second largest city.
Officials recently declared the rebels defeated in the region, but the sounds of battle reflected their continued strength, despite several major government offensives against them.
Macedonia’s security council reviewed the crisis last night and decided that talking with the militants remained out of the question. The government has long insisted that the rebels are terrorists bent on carving off a piece of the country and uniting it with Albania or Kosovo.
The clashes followed tentative gains made by the army in clashes with insurgents in northern villages where thousands of civilians remain trapped as the army continues its offensive.
The intensity of the fighting underscored earlier government threats to "eliminate" the rebels unless they abandon their armed struggle for more rights. The clashes centred on several northern villages, where the rebels have dug in, along with thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians caught up in the fighting.
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s mission in Macedonia, Francois Steamm, said that 10,000 civilians are trapped in rebel controlled villages in the Kumanovo region.
"There’s every reason for concern over the state of refugees in these villages," Steamm said. "The time spent in cellars is taking its toll on the population both physically and psychologically."
Asked about government claims that refugees are being used as human shields, Steamm said that the ICRC "does not exclude some kind of pressure, but there’s also a strong sense of solidarity" among the civilians with the rebels. He did not elaborate further.
During lulls in the fighting, the ICRC has managed to evacuate 336 women, children and elderly, and deliver aid to those civilians still in the villages.
