Terrorism Worlds News

Terrorism News - Full Text

Yeltsin Pledges to Wage
Uncompromising Struggle with
Terrorism.

Itar-Tass
19-MAR-99

MOSCOW, March 19 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Friday pledged in a televised address that an uncompromising struggle would be waged with terrorism.

"Another act of terrorism was carried out in the Caucasus and caused great sorrow to people," the head of state said. Yeltsin offeredd condolences to those who had lost their friends and relatives in the fatal blast at the Vladikavkaz city market, and added that the government would render all the necessary support and assistance to the families of the victims. "I repeat it once more that uncompromising struggle with terrorism will be waged," he emphasized. Yeltsin further said that Interior Minister Stepashin and Head of the Federal Security Service Putin had left for Vladikavkaz, the scene of the tragedy. The president pointed out that extraordinary measures were being taken. The measures had been agreed upon with Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, Yeltsin said.

"I apologize to friends and relatives of the blast victims as a man who is responsible for everything happening in Russia," Yeltsin said.

"They will not get away with it," he said in conclusion. ily/mos

Lawyers Visit Turkey's Jailed
Rebel Chief Ocalan

Reuters
19-MAR-99

ISTANBUL, March 19 (Reuters) - Lawyers for captured Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan went to visit their client on Friday at his Turkish island jail, Anatolian news agency said.

Lawyer Ahmet Zeki Okcuoglu, accompanied by three other attorneys, left the coastal town of Mudanya by boat for Imrali island, south of Istanbul, where Ocalan awaits trial on treason charges which carry the death penalty.

Their visit came a day after Ocalan issued his first statement since being seized last month by Turkish special forces in Kenya. He said he would base his defence on a call he made last year for a ceasefire in the Kurdish rebel conflict.

Turkey's powerful military subsequently issued a statement rejecting any negotiations with Ocalan's guerrillas, in an apparent response to his efforts to portray himself as a peacemaker.

Turkey holds Ocalan responsible for the deaths of more than 29,000 people in the Kurdistan Workers Party's (PKK) 14-year-old armed campaign for self-rule in the southeast. It is not clear when his trial will start.

The PKK declared unilateral ceasefires in 1993, 1995 and 1998 and has made a series of other calls for a halt to hostilities. Ankara has dismissed them as tactical manoeuvres of what it views as a terrorist group.

A rash of violent attacks has swept the country in an appearent protest against Ocalan's capture.

Anatolian quoted Okcuoglu as saying that Ocalan did not view the violence "positively." "I tell him all of what is happening. Apart from that, he does not have any communication with the world," the lawyer said.

More than 90 Colombians Nabbed
in Kidnap Spree

Reuters
19-MAR-99

BOGOTA, March 19 (Reuters) - Marxist rebels and a right-wing death squad have abducted more than 90 people in a kidnap spree across three Colombian provinces, local media reported Friday.

Witnesses told the Radionet all-news radio network the wave of abductions began Thursday in southern Putumayo province, where paramilitary gunmen raided a village near the oil-refining town of Hormiga and carted off 25 townspeople in the back of trucks.

More than 50 other people were kidnapped early Friday by self-described members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia's main leftist rebel army, at a makeshift roadblock erected across a highway in northern Cesar province, Radionet said.

At about the same time, it said 19 people were nabbed by National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels at a roadblock in the southwest province of Cauca.

The victims in Cauca included six prison inmates from Popayan, the provincial capital, who were in the process of being transferred to a penitentiary in northern Colombia, local officials told the radio station.

A spokesman at National Police headquarters in Bogota said they were of several mass kidnappings, but were still working on reports detailing the circumstances and total number of people involved.

"We haven't come up with a consolidated figure yet," he said, adding that all the victims were believed to be Colombians.

Colombia has what authorities regularly describe as the highest abduction rate anywhere around the globe, with about 2,400 cases reported last year alone.

Most of the kidnappings are blamed on the FARC and ELN, which were founded in the mid-1960s and have long used ransoms to help bankroll their war against the state.

Ultra-right paramilitary groups are seldom accused of carrying out kidnappings for ransoms. But they target leftists and suspected rebel sympathizers and have been killing with impunity for years.

Human rights monitors say paramilitary gangs operate with the open or tacit support of the military, a charge the government and armed forces reject out of hand.

Northern Ireland Quietens, Peace
Quest Goes on

Reuters
19-MAR-99

BELFAST, March 19 (Reuters) - The sectarian flashpoint town of Portadown was quiet on Friday, following two nights of rioting, as Northern Ireland politicians were due back in the province from talks in Washington.

With fervent pleas for peace from U.S. President Bill Clinton and the British and Irish Prime Ministers ringing in their ears, Catholic and Protestant leaders will press ahead with efforts to end a long-running deadlock that has stalled a year-old peace deal.

But two nights of rioting, which saw masked petrol-bombers fighting running battles with riot police hours after the funeral of a Catholic human rights lawyer murdered by Protestant guerrillas, showed the scale of the task ahead.

"It's tense but quiet, the road is clear," a Catholic resident of Portadown's Garvaghy Road said after the overnight violence.

An outlawed Protestant militia killed lawyer Rosemary Nelson with a boobytrap car bomb in the nearby town of Lurgan on Monday. Ceasefires by the main guerrilla forces are holding but dangerous dissidents lurk on both sides.

President Clinton, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern issued a tripartite statement on Friday urging the leaders to end a deadlock and agree on structures mapped out in last year's Good Friday peace deal.

"More courage will be needed. But we are nearly there," they said in a joint statement issued as the province entered the final two weeks before the deadline for the structure, set for April 2, the Good Friday holiday of the Easter weekend.

In another reminder of the province's violent legacy, a Belfast judge on Friday convicted an IRA guerrilla, Bernard Michael McGinn, of murdering Stephen Restorick, the last British soldier to be killed before the Irish Republican Army called off its war against British rule in July 1997.

McGinn is likely to be released after 18 months under the terms of a peace pact agreed by feuding groups last year.

The peace process came under further strain when a Protestant militia blamed a rival pro-British group for the murder on Wednesday of a well-known Protestant hardliner, and threatened to launch a bloody feud.

The head of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the province's police force, called in a senior English police officer to head the Nelson murder probe, and is also drawing on the expertise of a senior FBI agent from the United States.

Some Catholics had claimed officers in the predominantly Protestant RUC may have colluded with the Red Hand Defenders (RHD), the group which killed Nelson.

Nationalist politicians, many of whom distrust the RUC, had called for an independent international inquiry. But David Phillips, head of police in the English county of Kent, who is leading the Nelson murder team, said the RUC would be involved.

"It is the clear professional judgement of the Chief Constable of Kent and the FBI representative, that the best chance of detecting those responsible lies in the RUC conducting the investigation," said a statement issued by the RUC press office on behalf of Phillips and FBI legal attache John Guido.

The head of the province's police complaints commission - a civilian agency - said it had contacted Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam last year and voiced "serious concerns" about the way the RUC had investigated Nelson's claims that its officers had threatened her.

Paul Donnelly, chairman of the Independent Commission for Police Complaints, told a news conferences it was the first time that the commission had "felt it necessary to inform the Secretary of State," since its creation in 1987.

Focus-Fighting Blocks
Pristina-Belgrade Highway

Reuters
20-MAR-99

PRISTINA, Serbia, March 20 (Reuters) - Serbian security forces, backed by armour including tanks, blocked the highway between Kosovo's capital Pristina and Belgrade on Saturday after a police station came under rebel attack, Serb sources said.

Civilians were also seen fleeing shelling in the hills west of Srbica in north-central Kosovo on Saturday morning as fighting intensified in a dangerous vacuum caused by the withdrawal of international truce monitors.

Reporters were halted by police about 10 km (six miles) north of Pristina. and near the highway. Heavy small arms fire tore through the air in the vicinity.

Serb sources said the police station near Luzane, 18 km (11 miles) north of Pristina, was attacked by ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas using rocket launchers and mortars on Friday evening. No casualties were reported.

Local Serb media said KLA rebels also hit police positions in the north-central towns of Glogovac and Srbica with automatic weapons, anti-tank grenades and mortars on Friday night and Saturday morning.

A Reuters news team trying to drive north along the Glogovac-Srbica road from the Komorane highway junction in central Kosovo were blocked by Serbian police in battle gear backed by tanks and APCs.

Refugees in the area said there had been fighting.

The Glogovac-Srbica corridor was believed to have been in guerrilla hands as recently as Friday.

In addition, Yugoslav federal army troops with armour were arrayed along the main highway west of Pristina that runs through Komorane en route to Pec in the far west of Kosovo.

The troops were combat-ready with heavy machine guns training off the road as if primed to repel a rebel ambush.

The area between Luzane and Podujevo has seen regular clashes between government troops and guerrillas since mid-December, when a Yugoslav army armoured brigade moved into the area in violation of a ceasefire agreement.

A continuous build-up of government troops and equipment in the region since then has led some observers to worry that a government offensive against suspected KLA positions in the area is about to commence.

Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, lies about 300 km (180 miles) north of Kosovo.

Saturday's action came as international monitors were pulling out of Kosovo, a province of Serbia with a rebellious 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority, after peace talks fell apart in Paris the day before.

Yugoslavia is now under threat of NATO air strikes to force acceptance of the peace deal. Aid workers trying to make their way north to Belgrade from Pristina to leave the country were blocked by Saturday's fighting.

Reuters reporters met some 30 ethnic Albanian refugees from the village of Poklek, outside Glogovac, about 20 km (12 miles) west of Pristina. Mostly women and children, they were trudging through the snow as shells exploded in the distance.

The refugees said security forces began bombarding a nearby village at 7 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Saturday from the Koretica area where the Serbs were known to have armour and artillery.

"Only God knows how much we have suffered and we're still suffering now," said Sanije Hoxha, an elderly woman clad in a headscarf and leaning wearily on a cane after walking across a field following her flight from Poklek.

A man who was too much in a hurry to stop long to speak to reporters said only, "We don't know what's happening. We woke up to find our village surrounded by army and police. We just don't know what's happening."

Focus-Bomber Blows up Self,
Wounds Three in Turkey

Reuters
20-MAR-99

DIYARBAKIR, March 20 (Reuters) - A suspected Kurdish guerrilla was killed and three people were wounded in an apparent suicide bomb attack in eastern Turkey on Saturday, a local government official said.

A wave of violence has hit Turkey since the capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan last month.

The attack took place a day ahead of the Kurdish new year festival of Newroz, a traditional time of protest and often violent clashes between security forces and restive Kurds.

The official said the attacker pulled a pin to set off the bomb when challenged by police near a traffic control centre in the town of Baskale, close to the border with Iran.

The bomber's body was ripped apart by the blast, making it impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman. Two policemen and one other person were lightly injured in the attack, the official said.

"We are trying to identify the terrorist who was blown apart. The terrorist's inability to set off the bomb in front of the police traffic control centre prevented loss of life," state-run Anatolian news agency quoted the provincial governor as saying.

It was the fifth suicide bomb attack in Turkey since November.

In a separate incident, police killed a man in a shootout by a motorway in Istanbul overnight.

"The person immediately hid behind the pillars of the bridge and opened fire on our friends," Anatolian quoted police city chief Hasan Ozdemir as saying. "A clash broke out. In the clash one terrorist died."

Ozdemir said a hand grenade was found in the man's pocket.

Police shot and killed man in a similar clash on Wednesday. Thirteen people died in a fire bomb attack on an Istanbul department store last week.

Authorities have mounted a security clampdown to cope with the violence which they blame on Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas.

Ocalan is being held in an island prison in the Sea of Marmara awaiting trial on treason charges for leading the PKK's 14-year campaign for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast. Some 29,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Ireland's Ahern Urges End to
N.Irish Deadlock

Reuters
21-MAR-99

DUBLIN, March 21 (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said on Sunday a way had to be found to end a deadlock at the heart of the Northern Ireland peace process.

With rival parties poised for an intensive effort to ease the latest crisis threatening the historic "Good Friday" peace deal, Ahern said he believed a formula would be found to end divisions and enable the creation of a Protestant-Catholic coalition administration.

"I do believe that out of the dialogue will emerge a formula," he told RTE, Ireland's national broadcasing network.

"I believe that as hard as it is to do -- and it is extremely hard -- the alternative is just unacceptable, so therefore we have to find a way," he added.

Britain has set a deadline of the week beginning March 29 to establish a power-sharing executive in its province. But Protestant Unionists say they will not sit alongside Catholic Republicans unless anti-British IRA guerrillas disarm.

The executive is a vital element of the landmark deal which also obliges parties to try to achieve guerrilla disarmament.

Ahern warned that failure to end the impasse would hand a victory to the pact's opponents, including Irish republican dissidents who killed 29 people in last year's bombing in Omagh town and pro-British loyalists who shot a Catholic human rights lawyer last week.

A key architect of the landmark accord along with his British counterpart British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Ahern said both governments had a central role to play.

"If we fail in this, then the anti-agreement people win. And among the anti-agreement people are the people who murdered the people in Omagh, the people who murdered (Catholic lawyer) Rosemary Nelson," Ahern said.

He said he hoped to meet Blair on Tuesday night. It is believed the meeting will be on the fringe of the European Union heads of government meeting which opens on Wednesday in Berlin.

Ahern also applauded rival political leaders, pro-British Unionist David Trimble and Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political arm for what he called their "honourable" efforts to achieve peace.

Focus-Turkey Clamps down on
Kurdish Day of Protest

Reuters
21-MAR-99

MARDIN, Turkey, March 21 (Reuters) - Turkish police and troops stepped up patrols in the mainly Kurdish southeast on Sunday, tightening security for a Kurdish spring festival that has often been the focus of separatist protest.

Security and fire services raced to douse traditional bonfires lit to mark the Kurdish Newroz festival and disperse groups of young men who had gathered around them.

Police in the southeastern province of Mardin, near the Syrian border, detained and expelled a Reuters correspondent and three other Turkish journalists.

Witnesses said police armoured cars patrolled Diyarbakir, the administrative centre of the southeast. The city has been closed to journalists who are not based there since the capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan last month triggered a wave of separatist violence.

Police arrested scores of stone-throwing young men and sent bulldozers to put out some of the bonfires that sprang up.

Authorities are concerned that Newroz could spark further attacks in the southeast and in major cities in western Turkey, where a large numbers of Kurds live.

The festival traditionally welcomes spring but has now become a rallying point for militant Kurdish nationalism. In a suburb of the western city of Istanbul, members of an "anti-terror" police unit fired into the air before charging a crowd of around 200 people who had gathered around burning tyres in a stretch of waste ground.

Witnesses said over 100 people were arrested. Police and armoured cars chased protesters into streets around the area, where small fires smouldered. A police helicopter clattered overhead.

Police and soldiers had taken up positions in the centre of the eastern town of Tunceli and on major access roads and were searching cars. A Reuters journalist saw four or five armoured cars entering the town of Kiziltepe and two driving into Mardin.

Reuters reporter Osman Senkul, a Turkish national, was taken by police from his hotel in Mardin province with other Turkish correspondents to the regional capital Diyarbakir. He was told he would be put on a flight out of the region.

Police had shown the reporters a directive from the deputy emergency rule governor saying that "foreign and domestic members of the press may not work in the region without authorisation from the Directorate of Press and Information."

The press officer of Mardin province had earlier told Reuters that reporters would be welcome during the Newroz festivities. Reuters had not been informed of any changes to the rules governing access to the region.

Police have previously declared that an emergency zone, set up to combat activities of the Kurdistan Workers Party, was closed to journalists and expelled several correspondents. The Mardin region, however, was removed from the zone some time ago.

Police raided offices of Kurdish groups nationwide on the eve of Newroz, which means "new day" in Kurdish.

"We know 165 were detained in Istanbul. Other offices have been searched, houses raided...so it is hard to know the full figure, but they are saying 2,000 nationwide," said a spokesman for the People's Democracy Party, a legal Kurdish grouping.

Authorities say Kurdish guerrillas seeking revenge for the capture of Ocalan are behind a recent wave of violent attacks across Turkey. The rebels are waging an armed campaign for self-rule for the southeast in which more than 29,000 people have died in the last 14 years.

Ocalan faces a treason trial, accused of running a campaign that has included killing state employees, including teachers and their families, as well as attacks on Turkish troops.

A suspected Kurdish guerrilla blew himself up and wounded three others in the eastern town of Baskale on Saturday.

Turkish authorities have in recent years tried to portray Newroz as an ancient Turkish festival and mounted official celebrations. But other illegal festivities often break out.

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit issued a written statement stressing that the festival is observed not just by Kurds but in many neighbouring countries.

"Newroz has been celebrated as a symbol of peace, tolerance and friendship in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East for 1,000 years," he said.

Mexico's Zapatistas Hold
Plebiscite

Reuters
21-MAR-99

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexicans began casting votes Sunday in a non-binding plebiscite on Indian rights seeking to end centuries of misery for indigenous people and revive a flagging guerrilla movement fighting on their behalf.

The Zapatista rebels Sunday used the ballot box in their latest tactic to win a propaganda war with the government.

Rebels, wearing trademark ski masks, have set up voting booths across the country for their most ambitious endeavor since launching their uprising in southernmost Chiapas state on Jan. 1, 1994.

The ballot contains four questions including: whether "indigenous people" should share in the wealth and construction of the country; whether they should enjoy special constitutional rights as negotiated by Zapatistas in peace talks that later broke down; and whether people want a "demilitarization" of Chiapas to foment peace talks.

Votes can be cast through the Internet and by Mexican-Americans in the United States.

Results are expected late Sunday night or early Monday morning.

The government has labeled the Zapatista effort a "ruse" but has allowed it to take place so long as rebels remain unarmed.

It is not known how many of the 5,000 Zapatistas who fanned out across the country have been involved in guerrilla activity or whether they are supporters but their presence evokes memories of the early days of the uprising symbolized by charismatic rebel leader Subcommander Marcos.

Wearing his ski mask, smoking a pipe and with bandoliers strapped across his chest, Marcos has captured the imagination of government opponents for his bravado in battle and his flair for poking fun at the government.

Marcos, the only non-Indian in the Zapatista leadership, has remained behind in the Zapatista stronghold in the jungles of Chiapas, an impoverished state on Mexico's southern border with Central America.

There he resides with several hundred cadres making up what is left of the Zapatista military threat, badly outnumbered by the Mexican army that surrounds them while a cease-fire holds.

Though the "war" has been silent for years, hundreds of people in Chiapas have died in related political violence, often pitting Zapatista supporters against government supporters.

The 1994 uprising lasted just 10 days and cost 150 lives. A cease-fire was called but peace talks broke down two years ago over the issue of Indian human rights.

Zapatistas have always relied more on politics, often outfoxing the government or at least setting the agenda.

In response to the vote, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo dedicated his weekly national radio address to extolling his government's record for building hospitals, roads and schools in Chiapas.

The government has bombarded the airwaves with advertisements promoting its social spending in Chiapas and willingness to settle the Chiapas dispute through dialogue.

Sinn Fein to Meet IRA Prisoners
on N.Irish Peace

Reuters
22-MAR-99

BELFAST, March 22 (Reuters) - A leading Sinn Fein politician was due to meet Irish Republican Army men held in Northern Ireland's Maze prison on Monday to discuss a deadlock in the province's peace process over IRA disarmament.

Gerry Kelly, a convicted IRA bomber and jail-breaker who became a prominent member of Sinn Fein's peace talks team, told Reuters he would meet the prisoners for 4-1/2 hours.

"I'll be giving them an update on how things are going. I'll listen to their views and have a general discussion," he said in a telephone interview.

Implementation of a peace deal signed on April 10 last year has been delayed by a row between pro-British and pro-Irish politicians over whether Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, should sit in a coalition cabinet before the IRA hands in its guns and bombs.

The peace deal says armed groups on both sides of the conflict, in which more than 3,600 people have been killed, should hand in their arms by May 2000 but Protestant prime-minister-in-waiting David Trimble wants the IRA to start disarming immediately to prove its commitment to peace.

Asked if his talks with prisoners would cover disarmament, known as decommissioning in the jargon of the peace process, Kelly said: "As far as republicans are concerned the problem is whether David Trimble will or will not set up the executive and the excuse he is using is decommissioning, so I've no doubt it will come up."

Many IRA prisoners have been released under the terms of peace agreement signed on April 10 last year but about 110 are left in the Maze prison near Belfast.

Opposed by armed Protestant groups, the IRA fought British rule with bombs and bullets for nearly 30 years until calling a truce in July 1997 to promote Sinn Fein's role in peace talks. The major Protestant guerrilla groups have also called truces.

19 Sri Lankan Soldiers Killed in
Rebel Attack

Xinhua
18-MAR-99

COLOMBO, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Nineteen Soldiers were killed and more than 30 others injured in a Tamil rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) attack on an army camp at Mannar on the northwestern coast of Sri Lanka on Thursday.

The local Divayina newspaper reported Friday that a 213-strong army camp which came under rebel attack with mortars and heavy artillery also saw the destruction of seven vehicles and an ammunition dump within the camp premises.

One of the vehicles which was destroyed had been an armored truck which had been heavily loaded, the report said.

At least six soldiers and two civilians were killed while 14 others were seriously injured in the incident, military sources said Thursday evening.

The report added that government troops had been launching several attack against the LTTE from this camp during the past week and it is believed that the attack on the camp was to prevent further operations from there.

The LTTE is fighting for a separate homeland for minority Tamils in Sri Lanka's north and east in a war which began in 1983.

Sudanese Rebel Chief Wants End
to North's ''Jihad''

Reuters
22-MAR-99

GENEVA, March 22 (Reuters) - Southern Sudanese guerrilla leader John Garang said on Monday there could be no peace accord with the government in Khartoum while it insisted on establishing Islamic law throughout the country.

At a news conference called as the United Nations Human Rights Commission was opening its annual six-week session in Geneva, he also made clear his movement would be pushing at peace talks next month for a confederal state in the north and the largely Christian south.

The Sudanese government "seeks to establish a theocratic, Islamic state throughout the country...Unless they change this position, it will be impossible to come to any agreement with them," Garang added.

He said the Khartoum authorities had declared "jihad" -- or religious war -- against its non-Islamic opponents in 1992.

A new round of talks involving the government and Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which says it controls most of the south, is due to be held in Nairobi from April 20 to 25.

The SPLM is political wing of the guerrilla Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), and is linked in a wider opposition front with northern groupings, including the influential UMMA Party, in a National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Garang, who has been a key figure for around three decades in resistance in the south to Islamic rule from the north, said his movement wanted a "New Sudan" in which people of all faiths would be treated equally.

If Khartoum could not accept that, he said, confederation was the best alternative.

"They can have their Islamic state in the north, and we would have a state in the south where all religions would have the same treatment and people would live in freedom," he added.

Garang, expected to address the Human Rights Commission on the situation in his country, said the SPLM and the NDA had already set up civil administrations in the areas they controlled, including parts of the north.

"As much as possible, we are establishing good governance," he said, but Sudanese forces were working to destroy such administrations, bombing and strafing villages and even attacking hospitals.

Garang accused the authorities in Khartoum of using food deliveries from international aid agencies as "a weapon of war," limiting access to the south where some areas have been hit by famine in recent years.

But he also criticised United Nations bodies, like the UNICEF relief agency for children, which he said allowed the government to dictate where they could go.

"They should go everywhere. But they allow the regime to tell them where they carry out their relief work," he said.

He also criticised the international community for not putting more pressure on Khartoum to end the war. "Is it a religious right to declare jihad, or is that a violation of the human rights of the people the jihad is declared against?" he asked.

Algeria Army Hits Back after
Ambush Kills 16-Paper

Reuters
23-MAR-99

ALGIERS, March 23 (Reuters) - Government forces have carried out a major operation 90 km (55 miles) east of Algiers against rebels who killed 16 soldiers in an ambush, the army's biggest single loss this year, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Thousands of troops backed by helicopter gunships and artillery launched a sweep across forested stretches of Bouira, Lakhdaria and Bordj-Menaiel after the ambush on a military convoy, which took place 16 days ago, Le Matin said.

The elite troops taking part had killed 22 rebels in the Bouira area, 16 in Lakhdaria and eight in Bordj-Menaiel in the past three days, it reported.

The rebels were believed to be members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Algeria's most radical guerrilla faction, which has staged attacks on government forces from bases in the area for the past 19 months, Le Matin said.

"Heavy military means and huge number of soldiers have been deployed in order to wipe out for ever the guerrillas from these areas," said Le Matin, without giving further details.

It did not say whether the operation was still under way, and there was no immediate confirmation of the report from official or independent sources.

The newspaper El Alam Assiassi reported that troops were besieging about 200 rebels in Lakhdaria, but gave no details.

The ambush in Bouira was the fourth and deadliest ambush of government forces this year.

At least 16 soldiers died and 11 were wounded in two ambushes two weeks earlier, one in the Tizi-Ouzou area east of Algiers, and one in Tiaret region, 220 km (135 miles) southwest of the capital.

Algeria plunged into violence in early 1992, when the authorities cancelled a general election in which radical Islamists had taken a commanding lead.

More than 65,000 people -- civilians, rebels and members of government forces -- have been killed since then, according to some Western estimates.

The U.S. State Department, in a report on the Algerian conflict released last month, estimated the number of people killed in the past seven years of civil strife at 77,000.

Focus-Fighting Resumes in Kosovo
Rebel Stronghold

Reuters
23-MAR-99

REZALA, Serbia, March 23 (Reuters) - Fighting resumed around the village of Poljac in Kosovo's Drenica region on Tuesday as Serbian security forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas clashed in the area for a fourth straight day.

Small arms and machine-gun fire began echoing up the hill from Poljac to Rezala and heavy artillery shells slammed into the gently rolling terrain about 10 a.m. (0900 GMT) as U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic sat down in Belgrade for a second round of crisis talks on Kosovo.

The talks ended three hours later with no word of progress towards an agreement that would avert international intervention.

The fighting here, which varied in tempo and intensity through the morning, seemed slack by comparison with previous days' fierce exchanges in the area.

When reporters first arrived on the ridgeline in Rezala overlooking Poljac, huge plumes of smoke spiralled up from houses and buildings that had been ignited by fighting or deliberately torched by Serbian forces.

Guerrilla soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were making their way to the front, using hedgerows, ditches and haystacks to shield their movements.

Others could be seen digging trenches within sniping distance of the roadway that passes through Poljac, linking the towns of Srbica and Glogovac.

But as small-arms fire began to crackle along the front and the first shells whistled in, the KLA fighters scurried for cover and assumed their fighting positions.

Belgrade's Drenica offensive is part of an overall push against the KLA across Kosovo in defiance of international threats to launch NATO air strikes if the assaults do not stop.

Milosevic also faces NATO action if he does not accept an internationally-sponsored autonomy plan for Kosovo that leaders of the ethnic Albanians, 90 percent of Kosovo's people, signed last week.

As Holbrooke and Milosevic walked the tightrope between war and peace on Tuesday, optimists could take comfort in the fact that the scale and intensity of fighting and the weight of refugee flows seemed to have dropped off across the province.

KLA officials said the dropoff had come because their guerrilla forces were putting up stiffer resistance than the Serbs had expected, especially around Drenica and Podujevo further east, effectively stalling their advance.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees have been stampeded from their homes by fighting in various parts of Kosovo in recent weeks, including at least 10,000 in the KLA stronghold of Drenica.

Kosovo is a southern province of Serbia, the dominant of two federal republics in the former Yugoslavia.