More than 4,000 ethnic Albanians have fled the buffer zone in southern Serbia into the UN-run province of Kosovo, in fear of renewed fighting between Kosovo separatist rebels and Serbian forces, the UN refugee agency said Thursday.
"Some 4,400 people have left southern Serbia for Kosovo in a week, out of which a thousand left yesterday...they found refuge with their families in Kosovo," Maki Shinohara, the spokeswoman for UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Belgrade told reporters.
Shinohara added that the people "have not reported any act of intimidation or violence to UNHCR."
"Basically, they say they moved out of the area as a precaution," Shinohara said.
The situation in the buffer, which runs five kilometre (three-mile) in Serbia along its border with Kosovo, remains calm but tense after last week's fighting betwen ethnic Albanian guerillas and the Serbian police in which three policemen were killed.
The area was demilitarized last year under an accord between Yugoslavia and NATO, which allows only lightly armed Serbian police to enter the zone.
Shinohara said that no refugees were reported to have arrived in nearby Macedonia.
Some 150 people were sheltering at centers in Bujanovac, the main Serbian town in the area, just outside the buffer zone.
She also noted the problems of Serbs in eastern Kosovo, whose convoy has been blocked at the administrative border, unable to cross into Serbia to buy food and medicine.
Shinohara said the UNHCR very much appreciated the gesture of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica who has expressed his will to find a diplomatic solution to the problems in and around the buffer zone, and to avoid the use of force – BELGRADE (AFP)
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