NATO launches most active strike day yet

But the refugee crisis only deepened on the 25th straight day of attacks aimed at making Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic halt his offensive in Kosovo and agree to a political settlement for the Serbian province.

Ethnic Albanians continued to pour out of Kosovo at the rate of a thousand an hour, bringing Serb forces closer to emptying the province of its ethnic Albanian majority. An estimated 40,000 refugees either left Kosovo for neighboring territory over the weekend or were at its borders preparing to leave, international officials said.

In the latest tragedy to befall refugees, a car carrying a family across the border to Albania early yesterday struck a land mine planted at the edge of the narrow mountain path by Serb forces, killing three children, their mother and their grandmot

DANA LINNANE/Daily Protesters stand on Gratiot Avenue in Roseville, Mich., near where President Clinton spoke Friday. Crowds of people showed support for both Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and NATO involvement in Kosovo.

her.

NATO also raised evidence of what it said were 43 mass grave sites in Kosovo - some dug by groups of Kosovo Albanians rounded up by Serb forces to bury their countrymen.

The alliance's jets flew more than 500 missions in the 24-hour period ending yesterday afternoon - a total that a NATO military spokesperson said was the highest daily total yet. NATO pilots struck sites across Serbia and its Kosovo province, where they reported seeing smoke rising from burning villages.

Soon they will be bolstered by 24 U.S. Apache anti-tank helicopter gunships intended to target the Yugoslav army and special police forces accused of repressing Kosovo Albanians.

NATO said the first Apaches were expected in Albania from Italy by today but severe rainstorms delayed deployment at least another day.

An Albanian military source, meanwhile, said yesterday that several had already arrived elsewhere in the country over the previous two days.

Reflecting tensions over the stepped-up military activity in Albania, Yugoslavia severed diplomatic relations with its southern neighbor yesterday, the Albanian Foreign Ministry said.

Despite growing calls for NATO to send in ground troops, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana insisted there were still no such plans.

But Solana said in a television interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. that "if the moment comes when (a ground force) is necessary, I'm sure the countries that belong to NATO will be ready to do it."

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said even if ground troops were authorized, it would take two to three months to prepare.

Thick smoke mixed with choking fumes rose above an area targeted by a NATO attack on an oil storage depot and nitrogen fertilizer plant in Pancevo. just six miles northwest of Belgrade.

04-19-99