Civilians flee airstrikes

Strikes kill scores of refugees

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Scores of ethnic Albanian refugees were reported killed yesterday when warplanes struck tractors and wagons at two sites in southwestern Kosovo. Yugoslavia said NATO jets carried out the attacks, which it described as the most deadly assault on civilians in the three-week conflict.

Pentagon officials confirmed that American planes attacked vehicles on a road near Djakovica but said the planes hit only military trucks and pilots broke off the attack when they saw civilian vehicles. The American officials denied responsibility f

AP PHOTO Kosovar refugees wait outside a line of buses near the Blace boarder crossing between Kosovo and Macedonia. Nearly 2,000 people crossed the border yesterday.

or the other airstrike, which occurred further south near Prizren, and suggested Yugoslav planes may have carried out that attack.

The two incidents both occurred around 2 p.m. (8 a.m. EDT), according to refugees who arrived later at the Albanian border. The were part of a new surge in the exodus from Kosovo, amid fresh reports that Serb-dominated Yugoslav forces had intensified their brutal campaign against ethnic Albanian civilians in the province.

Refugees who witnessed the scene near Djakovica said the road was heavily traveled by both civilian and military vehicles, but they reported seeing only civilian casualties after two tractor-pulled wagons were hit. They described a gruesome scene, with the ground around the wagons littered with body parts.

"There were a lot" of people killed, said Sadete Sadiku, who provided a detailed account in Albania while half a dozen other witnesses listened and nodded in agreement. "I don't know the number but ... there are nearly 25 or 30 people on (each) tractor, so it was probably 50 or 60 dead."

The attack near Prizren hit a single tractor and its trailer, leaving three dead and three wounded, according to refugees.

"It was a plane and I saw it," said Qazim Tata. "I don't know whether the plane was Serb or NATO, but probably it was Serb because NATO would not attack us."

Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nebosja Vujovic reported that 75 people were killed and 25 injured in the incidents.

Uncertainty over what happened was compounded by erroneous and confusing reports issued by Pentagon and NATO authorities during the day. Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's top commander, first suggested that the attacks on the refugees may have been perpetrated as a retaliatory action by Yugoslav forces, who were part of a convoy of refugees and whose trucks had been targeted by NATO warplanes.

But by early evening, Clark had retracted that theory. He said he could not yet account for the civilian casualties.

"There were aircraft working the area all day," the general said in a telephone interview. "We're talking to the pilots, looking at the video, listening to the cockpit recordings, going through every single weapon that was dropped in that area to determine what happened."

Clark said the pilots reported hitting only military trucks and believed the trucks had come from Djakovica earlier in the day, where Yugoslav forces were seen burning houses and jumping into the vehicles. He said the trucks were traveling in a long convoy, spaced about 100 yards apart, and each one was targeted separately.

"As the pilots were attacking the military trucks, they saw civilian vehicles and suspended the attacks," a senior Pentagon officials said yesterday night.

In the other incident, Pentagon officials said another convoy of about 600 refugees was traveling on the road from Prizren to the Albanian town of Kukes. The Pentagon said the refugees, all women and children, told U.N. relief workers that they came under attack from Serbian planes.

Despite NATO's intense air campaign, Pentagon officials said that Yugoslav forces have continued to operate low-flying Super Galeb jets and helicopters. However, the U.S. officials could not confirm that any Yugoslav aircraft were operating yesterday in the area through which the convoy passed.

In Belgium, NATO issued a statement that its pilots had fired on military vehicles in "controlled attacks" and had been fired on from the ground with surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery.

"The pilots state they attacked only military vehicles," the allied military command said several hours after the attack. The allies said no civilian casualties could be confirmed but promised a full investigation.

Vujovic described the allegation that Yugoslav war planes had hit the refugee column as "monstrous lies," and said that Yugoslav planes had not been operating in southwestern Kosovo yesterday. He said that the Yugoslav authorities would support their version of events with evidence of bomb fragments manufactured in NATO countries.

He called the attacks "a crime against humanity," as he and other Yugoslav authorities seized on the incidents as ammunition in their propaganda war with NATO.

"This was done deliberately ... a massacre of Albanian refugees who were returning to their homes in the middle of the day," Serbian President Milan Milutinovic said in a statement read on Yugoslav television.

The loss of civilian life as a result of NATO bombing has become an important weapon for Yugoslavia in the battle for public opinion, both at home and abroad. The Yugoslav authorities have generally refused to show off damage to military facilities but have been quick to take foreign reporters to places where civilians have been killed.

The Yugoslav army press center in Belgrade said that it was attempting to arrange a visit to the scene in Kosovo for foreign journalists early today.

Yugoslav officials say that around 400 civilians have been killed in NATO bombing attacks over the last three weeks. According to the Yugoslav Beta agency, the casualty toll from a train that was hit by NATO missiles Monday as it was crossing a bridge near the southern Serbian town of Leskovac has now risen to 27.

04-15-99