Europe UN calls for emergency airlifts Refugees are still arriving at camps where there is no room left The UN refugee agency is calling on western governments to airlift thousands of refugees out of Macedonia, as the country struggles to cope with the influx of people fleeing Kosovo. A further 3,000 people are reported to be stuck in freezing conditions in the hills on the border at Malina Mali. This latest call for help comes amid growing concern for Kosovo-Albanian refugees in Montenegro following the reported killing of six people on Monday by Yugoslav soldiers. I believe dangers for Macedonia are growing. He said the flood of Kosovo Albanians threatened to upset his country's fragile ethnic balance.
Correspondents say that Macedonia already has a sizeable Albanian minority.
Nato struck President Milosevic's party HQ The BBC correspondent in the capital Skopje, Paul Wood, says the situation in Macedonia is urgent as UN sources report that as many as 50,000 more refugees could be on their way from one of Kosovo's biggest towns, Gnjilane, which previously had not seen any large movement of people. The report cannot be independently confirmed, but international officials in Macedonia believe it could be evidence of a final push by the Serbian authorities to empty Kosovo of its Albanian population, our correspondent says. However, large-scale evacuations from the small airport in Skopje were not easy because of the heavy numbers of relief flights, and host countries might have to to use bigger aircraft to intensify the evacuation, he said. Alarm in Montenegro While more refugees are expected to arrive in Macedonia, the UN says that refugees who had fled to Yugoslavia's junior republic, Montenegro, are leaving on buses for Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania. This exodus follows an incident near the village of Rozaje on Monday, in which drunken army reservists killed six people, including both locals and refugees.