TETOVO, Macedonia (Islamweb & Agencies) - Macedonian Slav-dominated forces and ethnic Albanian Resistance men fought a fierce battle for control of the suburbs of a flashpoint town on Monday, ripping apart an 18-day truce and savaging peace prospects.Sniper shots rang through Tetovo's main square and heavy close-quarter exchanges of small-arms and machine-gun fire raged for most of the day around the predominantly Albanian town's sports stadium, where Macedonians said the Resistance had advanced. (Photo caption below).
A 12-year-old girl was killed by one of the mortar bombs flying over the stadium toward the Resistances' National Liberation Army (NLA) positions which have sprung up since the cease-fire began.
Tetovo's hospital director said 19 civilians and five Macedonian troops were also hurt in the heaviest fighting inside the town, 25 miles west of the capital Skopje, in five months of Liberation warfare across Macedonia's northern hills.
About 30 Albanians armed with automatic rifles, grenades and rocket launchers manned sandbagged barricades in a western suburb, vowing to defend ethnic kin, but there was no sign of NLA fighters descending from the hills in a pincer movement.
Western diplomats said both sides were to blame for the breach of the truce but noted the fighting played into the hands of hard-liners on the Macedonian side who want to scupper talks on a peace deal.
The United States added pressure for calm, saying breaches of the cease-fire were unacceptable.
RETREAT OR ASSAULT
But Macedonian Slav Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski undermined hopes for stability, threatening to launch an all-out assault on the NLA unless they pull back from territory he says they have taken under cover of the truce.
Fighting was not confined to Tetovo itself, with shells slamming into a string of villages in nearby mountains, from which the Resistance have advanced.
Residents reported fighting along the road to the Kosovo border as the NLA sought to secure control and defense officials said 22 Macedonian civilians had been captured in the region.
Further south, a Macedonian soldier patrolling the mountains bordering Albania was killed in an attack blamed on the NLA, which the Slav-dominated Defense Ministry said had come from across the border.
Macedonian civilians were seen evacuating as dusk fell. But fighting appeared to be following them down the highway toward Skopje, which was hit by three anti-tank rockets.
NOT DEAD YET
Western envoys refused to declare the fragile truce dead. But, according to experts, the fighting will be tough to rein in and the specter of civil war is rising anew as civilians get dragged in.
Talks on a deal which would extend greater civil rights to Albanians have all but collapsed under a hail of Slav Macedonian criticism that the concessions demanded of them were tantamount to tearing apart the former Yugoslav republic.
Envoys hope they can nurse the process back to life to bridge a narrow but deep ethnic divide over the official status of the Albanian language. But, according to the sources, they are not optimistic.
Slav Macedonian leaders view the primacy of their native tongue as pivotal to the identity of the 10-year-old country and have whipped up nationalist fervor which will make compromise tough.
The NLA has seized swathes of northern and western Macedonia where most Albanians live. And its move on Tetovo, the republic's unofficial Albanian capital, has alarmed Macedonians, who claim the hill villages above are being ethnically cleansed.
But the Albanians deny their agenda is territorial, saying they aim merely to improve the lot of Albanians, who have lived inside the borders of modern Macedonia for centuries and make up between a quarter and a third of its population of two million.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A Macedonian policeman moves into position in town of Tetovo, west of the capital Skopje, July 23, 2001. Macedonia's Slav Defense Minister warned ethnic Albanian fighters in the flashpoint town to withdraw from territory they have occupied during an 18-day truce or face an all-out assault. (Reuters)