My colleague, John Campbell, a veteran British soldier, turns on his vehicle s headlights to attract the chopper. It is too late for one wounded doctor who died moments before. Serbian troops pull back from positions in Kosovo following a peace agreement that 2,000 verifiers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will oversee. The atmosphere is like Liberation Day. People return to their homes for the first time in months.
Relatives embrace each other weeping.
At Malisevo, the purported capital of a liberated Kosovo, a guerrilla commander talks to reporters as government troops withdraw from a garrison just a kilometer away. But many find their houses destroyed. There are still 200,000 people displaced in Kosovo. Several hundred returnees at Opterusa in the Suva Reka municipality flee again. Five KLA guerrillas are killed in a nearby ambush three days later.