Albania - Aid officials puzzled today over the sudden drying up of the stream of refugees out of Kosovo, uncertain whether border fighting had stopped the flow or Serbs had blocked it. Refugees reported thousands still on the move within Kosovo. But fewer than 150 made it across yesterday. After a weekend in which tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians poured out of the southern Serbian province, the only to cross into Albania were a few cars and trucks full of people and an old man on foot. In Macedonia, only 30 made it.
People hear about killings and massacres in the region, and they're afraid to come.
Goca and the few other refugees shed a little light on the fate of more than 100,000 ethnic Albanian refugees who were believed to be moving toward Kosovo's borders with Albania and Macedonia. Alarmed international refugee workers, who had been bracing for a massive new influx of refugees into the crowded tent camps set up near the Kosovo border, were at a loss to explain the abrupt slowdown in the exodus. We're actually very scared about what's happening inside. In the first days of the conflict, waves of refugees poured over Kosovo's borders, fleeing from Serb assaults, first on southwest Kosovo, then on the western city of Pec. Then people were forced onto trains leaving Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital, for Macedonia, where thousands were trapped for days in a mud pit at the Blace border.