They separate the women from the men. They form a circle around the naked women and force them to do humanly degrading acts,'' Serrano-Fitamant said. In Berlenitz, she said, women described masked soldiers slitting the throats of young boys and then cutting open the stomachs of pregnant women and skewering their fetuses on sharpened knives. She said the town was near the Albanian border but did not know the exact location. Reports of sexual violence against ethnic Albanian women from Kosovo have been circulating for months, but Serrano-Fitamant said there has been ''a significant upsurge'' since the week after NATO started bombing Yugoslavia on March 24.
New women arriving from Kosovo indicate that the violence is increasing.
Serrano-Fitamant said some women felt the soldiers considered them ''plunder'' while others believed they were raped as a ''concrete manifestation'' of the hate that Serbs feel toward ethnic Albanians. The trauma led some women to describe themselves as being forever ''dead'' to their families because of the stigma of being raped and violated in Muslim society, she said. Many others feel they risk being divorced or excluded from their community or family, she said. In response to the report, she said the Population Fund and other U.N. agencies will provide counseling training for health professionals and local Albanian women's groups. Copyright 1999 Associated Press .