Macedonian gunners resume barrage

Ethnic Albanian rebels engaged Macedonian soldiers and police in isolated skirmishes early today ending the eerie silence of the previous 24 hours.

There were sporadic blasts of heavy machine gun fire from Macedonian forces during the night, but no indication of any mobilization to leave their fortified positions.

At least 50 refugees crossed the border into neighbouring Kosovo today, and some sought treatment for wounds, said 1st Lt. Martin Valkysers, a spokesman for the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, known as KFOR.

‘‘Some of them are injured and are being treated by our troops,’’ he said.

Despite the renewed shelling by government forces, rebel fortifications and road blocks remained in place and there were no signs of mass retreat by the insurgents. Police at a road checkpoint inside Tetovo, the nation’s second-largest city, shot and killed two men believed to be ethnic Albanians who were holding grenades.

Government forces also exchanged gunfire today with rebels at a German military barracks in Tetovo, Detlef Puhl, spokesman for the German Defence Ministry, said in Berlin.

Last week, most German soldiers were moved from the barracks after it was caught in a cross-fire between Macedonian troops and ethnic Albanians.

Seven explosions were heard near the village of Tanusevci on the border with Kosovo early today, the US military in Kosovo said. There were unconfirmed reports that the Macedonian army was trying to clear border villages because people there were suspected of having sympathised with the rebels.

Rebel sniper positions as close as two miles from Tetovo’s centre were manned, and police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said mortar rounds were fired from Kosovo at a police checkpoint near the village of Gracane, 15 miles northeast of Tetovo, wounding a policeman.

Near the capital, Skopje, police reported another officer wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade, and there was fighting last night between rebels and police and special army anti-terrorist units in the town of Caska outside Skopje. Authorities closed off roads leading to the area.

‘‘If the Macedonian army and police go on a total offensive, we will move on to total guerrilla warfare and extend it to other cities,’’ a rebel commander who goes only by one name, Sokoli ‘‘Falcon’’ in Albanian told Deutsche Welle radio yesterday.

Shattering chances for talks with the rebels, government forces unleashed new shelling that had villagers fleeing to basements and guerrillas fortifying positions for a possible head-on assault.

Macedonian gunners resumed the barrage on hills outside Tetovo after more than 24 hours of calm the longest quiet period since the battles escalated last week. The attacks came despite the rebels’ offer of a truce in exchange for political negotiations.

The government, which refuses to talk with rebels it considers terrorists, had its own demands: surrender or flee the country. The next step, said President Boris Trajkovski, was to ‘‘neutralize and eliminate’’ the rebels.

That could prove to be very difficult.

The Macedonian military is weak and ill-equipped to fight a guerrilla insurgency. A large bloc perhaps nearly half of the 8,000-soldier conscript force is made up of ethnic Albanians who cannot be counted on to remain if called to fight.

The rebels, however, are led by commanders who joined the Kosovo Liberation Army in its fight in Kosovo against the much tougher Yugoslav military.

The rebels say they are a homegrown movement fighting for greater rights in Macedonia, where ethnic Albanians are outnumbered by Slavs by about three to one. But the government claims they are linked to fighters across the border in Kosovo and aim to break off northern Macedonia to form an independent ethnic Albanian state.