PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- Ethnic Albanian rebels killed three Serb policemen and seized eight soldiers Friday in separate ambushes in Kosovo, prompting Serb forces to gear up for a counterattack.
The attacks, one of which rebels said was in response to Serb shelling, are the latest in a spiral of retaliation that international monitors fear may eventually bring a tottering October truce to complete collapse.The Serb Media Center said the policemen were killed when Kosovo Liberation Army rebels fired an anti-tank weapon at their armored vehicle near Suva Reka, 30 miles south of the provincial capital Pristina.
In a separate ambush, guerrillas attacked a Yugoslav convoy carrying rations to troops stationed in the field near Kosovska Mitrovica, about 25 miles northwest of Pristina. They seized eight soldiers.
Friday evening two columns of Yugoslav army vehicles were seen leaving their Pristina garrison in the direction of Kosovska Mitrovica. Soldiers in the convoy told journalists they were headed to the area where the captive troops were thought to be held.
Meanwhile, the Yugoslav army said Friday that its troops had been fired on from across the border in Albania the day before. And the Albanian government accused Yugoslav aircraft of violating its airspace twice Thursday.
The KLA rebel group, which has bases in northern Albania, is fighting for the independence of Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia. Serbia is the main republic in Yugoslavia.
More than 1,000 people have been killed since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown in February, and tens of thousands remain homeless despite the cease-fire.
A top Serbian official in the province, Veljko Odalovic, said security forces will use "energetic and efficient action" to "normalize the situation" in Kosovo, the state-run Tanjug news agency reported.
Rebels told reporters that the Suva Reka ambush came after Serb forces shelled the nearby village of Slapuzani. Reporters could hear what seemed to be tank fire in the distance as ethnic Albanian refugees from the village sloshed through the mud clutching their belongings.
"You see our suffering," one woman told Associated Press Television News without giving her name. "They are burning our houses, they are shelling. We are miserable."
In the Suva Reka ambush, four policemen and two civilians were seriously wounded in a fierce firefight that followed the initial anti-tank weapon assault, the Serb center said.