Nato targets troops as refugees flee genocide and tells Serbs to pull back or die

NATO STEPPED up the air war against Yugoslavia last night in what appeared a desperate race against time to stop the Serbs from committing "genocide" against Albanian civilians in Kosovo.

As Nato bombers prepared for another night of action yesterday, the alliance announced that it had drawn a line across Yugoslavia, and threatened death from the skies if Serb troops and police did not pull back behind it. It said Serb tanks and troops moving south of the 44th parallel, 60 miles south of Belgrade, would now be pounded from the air.

Any fear this might instill into the Serbs was counterbalanced, however temporarily, by a mood of euphoria engendered by the downing in unknown circumstances of a F117A "stealth" bomber at Budjanovci, 25 miles north- west of Belgrade.

Villagers trooped to the crash site and danced with joy over the wreckage, while Serbian television proudly touted the downing of the pride of the United States air force as yet more proof of the Serbs' martial qualities.

The Pentagon was silent on what brought the stealth fighter down, although officials speculated privately that it might have been the work of a Soviet- made surface-to-air missile.

To intense US relief, the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, was denied the chance of parading a live "enemy" pilot in Belgrade after a daring search-and-rescue mission successfully spirited him out of Serbia and back to Aviano in Italy within hours. "Americans should be very proud of the skill and bravery of the American servicemen involved in the rescue operation yesterday in Kosovo," President Bill Clinton said.

About 60 Nato aircraft took off from Aviano last night, including B-52 long-range bombers loaded with cruise missiles. Kosovo Albanian sources said that they saw a Yugoslav army column hit near Malisevo, in central Kosovo, and four tanks destroyed. The alliance also hammered the airport at Nis, the largest city in southern Serbia, with some reported loss of life.

Western statesmen justified the intensified campaign, which is now aimed at Serbia's ground troops and tanks in Kosovo, by accusing the Serbian regime of switching its policy in the province from one of sporadic killings to mass murder.

"We are confronting a regime ... intent on genocide," said George Robertson, Secretary of State for Defence. His words were echoed by the German Defence Minister. "These troops are starting to commit genocide and we must prevent that," Rudolf Scharping said.

Mr Robertson said he believed that the Serb paramilitary chief known as Arkan, notorious for acts of terror against civilians in Croatia and Bosnia, had been sent to Kosovo to conduct a scorched-earth policy.

The ministers spoke as Nato officials warned of Europe's worst humanitarian catastrophe since the Second World War, equalling or exceeding the 1992- 5 carnage in Bosnia.

"We estimate that the number of people displaced from their homes in Kosovo has gone over the half-million mark and that number is increasing at a rapid rate," a Nato spokesman said.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Geneva said that as many as 16,000 Kosovars had fled from Kosovo into Albania in the past 48 hours, and that tens of thousands had gone to Bosnia and to Montenegro, a republic of Yugoslavia under a moderate, pro-Western government. Italy also braced itself for an influx of refugees. Last night, several hundred landed on beaches in the southern region of Puglia.

Aid agencies said that the refugees forced into neighbouring Albania were systematically stripped of their identification cards and car number plates on the frontier, to make sure they could never return to their homes. "They were driven out of their homes at gunpoint," a UNHCR spokesman said.

Albanians still in Kosovo told contacts in London that Serb paramilitary units were roaming the provincial capital, Pristina, pillaging and burning Albanian shops, and that almost half the town of Djakovica, in the west of Kosovo, appeared to be demolished or in flames. They said the Serb police were rapidly emptying other major urban conurbations, such as the western city of Pec, of their Albanian population and setting fire to houses.

At least 42 people were reported to have been murdered in the village of Bellacrka, near the west-central town of Orahovac. Tens of thousands of others were believed to be moving around in the open, hiding from the Serbs in woods and gorges.

Belgrade flatly denied that anything was amiss in its southern province. Bratislava Morina, the Serbian minister in charge of refugees, said: "There is no humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo whatsoever."

But in Washington, Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, said she had heard "terrible reports about men being separated from women and children, then being taken off and executed".

Ms Albright based her remark on the fact that almost all the refugees pouring into Albania and Montenegro were women and children, many of whom brought harrowing tales of being forcibly separated from their menfolk. "Thank God, I saved my 15-year-old son," said one refugee who reached sanctuary in Albania. "I put a dress on him and a shawl and the Serbs thought that he was a woman."

Defying claims that by riling the Serbs Nato may be worsening the plight of the Kosovars, Ms Albright said that the alliance would intensify attacks on Serb targets. President Clinton also denied that air strikes were aggravating the situation on the ground and said he still supported Nato's campaign to the hilt, which he said was aimed solely at stopping the "inhumane violence" in Kosovo. Britain said it was sending four more Harrier jets to fly against the Serbs, bringing the total to 12. General Sir Charles Guthrie, Chief of the Defence Staff, said that the attacks on Yugoslavia "will not diminish. Indeed, they will increase". While Britain and the US denied any intention of engaging in a land war with Serbia, pressure may mount on both governments if intense air strikes fail to stop the killing in Kosovo. "We have to exercise every option," cautioned Republican senator John McCain, "to convince him [Milosevic] that he cannot win and we will not allow him to win."

Javier Solana, the Secretary-General of Nato, was also less than categorical about a land war. Warning that President Milosevic's policy "will undoubtedly lead to an ethnic cleansing of Kosovo", he would say only that the deployment of ground forces in Kosovo was not being considered "at this time". When asked about any future deployment, he said: "I don't know how events will develop."

Protests against the Western air strikes continued, with 7,000 demonstrators in Sydney, Australia, marching on the US consulate. In Moscow, gunmen armed with grenade launchers and assault rifles attacked the American embassy in protest at the Nato action, which Russia has vigorously opposed. But in Albania, 10,000 people held a pro-Nato demonstration in the capital, Tirana.

As a pattern emerges of "ethnic cleansing" on a big scale in Kosovo, fears are growing that the fragile governments in the neighbouring states of Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro may collapse under the strain of the tide of refugees.