BLACE, Macedonia -- Ejected from his homeland at gunpoint Saturday, Zelfi Skreta shuffled stunned in a cold gray drizzle through this border checkpoint from Kosovo.

All he possessed were the worn clothes on his back and the Yugoslavian passport in his hand. In his native Albania, the 63-year-old farmer told a harrowing story of leaving his embattled Kosovo village in the morning hoping to find safety in the larger border town of General Jankovic.He said he and two friends wandered the roads near the border until they encountered Serb soldiers who stopped them and commanded them to leave Kosovo immediately and head into neighboring Macedonia.

The flesh under his right eye was swollen and purple. "A soldier did this," he said, gesturing gingerly to the bruise. "He hit me with his fist and then his gun."

He said he was struck because he asked to return to his village of Seciste. "They said, 'Go to Macedonia.' "

Serb soldiers and police went door-to-door Saturday through towns and villages across the Varda River from this isolated border crossing ordering residents to pack up and head to Macedonia, said Kosovar Albanians who were streaming across the border by late afternoon. The river of Kosovo refugees into Macedonia -- estimated at 16,000 -- has continued to swell since NATO airstrikes began against Serb military targets on on Wednesday.

Some said they had been given two hours to leave or risk being shot. Others said they were afforded five minutes.

"The police came to my home and said you have to go," said Suma Bacis, 71. "They said if you don't go we will kill you. The army is stealing everything we left behind."

One man said he asked Serb police to wait while he searched for his passport. He was told he wouldn't need it and was commanded to leave.

Another refugee, Ahmed Kalisi, said old men who were too frail to walk were left behind.

By sundown all that remained in General Jankovic were heavily armed Serb troops. The town, about 20 miles from the Macedonian capital of Skopje, lies in the path NATO ground forces in Macedonia would take to enter Kosovo. It rests on one of the few good roads that snakes through the steep mountains that rise between the troubled countries.

Residents on the Macedonian side of the border said Serb soldiers have increased patrols in recent nights, and they said they've seen them planting landmines.

A few miles down the road from the Blace checkpoint, Italian troops have taken up positions in rutted fields with several armored personnel carriers and mechanized artillery. Nearby, Macedonian farmers pushed plows behind huge horses and cast seeds on the broken soil by hand.

With conditions in Kosovo deteriorating rapidly as the U.S.-led NATO attacks escalate, ethnic Albanians are stepping up their exodus into neighboring Macedonia, where officials have shown considerable ambivalence about welcoming them.

Western officials have expressed fears that the influx of Albanian refugees could jar the delicate ethnic balance that supports a fledgling democracy in Macedonia, a former Yugoslavian republic. About 40 percent of Macedonia's population of about 2.2 million are ethnic Albanians. The NATO strikes already have raised tensions, with the tiny Serb minority staging violent demonstrations here outside the embassies of Britain and the United States. The U.S. Embassy here has been surrounded by spools of razor wire, and President Clinton has ordered 100 heavily armed Marines there to help protect it.

Officials estimate that about 20,000 refugees have come to Macedonia, but the number is probably greater. The Kosovar Albanians are difficult to track, because they move in with Macedonian Albanians rather than creating large refugee camps as they have in Kosovo and neighboring Albania.

Macedonia officials also worry the Serbs may retaliate, because Macedonia is the base for the 10,000 NATO troops destined for Kosovo if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic bows to Western pressure and accepts them.

Serbian authorities have forced the refugee flow to Macedonia by sealing the Kosovo border with Albania, which was rich with supply routes for arms bound for ethnic Albanian guerrillas seeking independence from Yugoslavia.

Officials in Britain and the United States have accused Belgrade of launching a full-scale offensive against Kosovo separatists in the wake of the air attacks.

Unconfirmed reports from Pristina, the Kosovo capital, describe a chaotic nightmare with Serbs and Albanian guerrillas engaged in house-to-house combat. There have been numerous reports of explosions in the central city. Serbs also have been accused of killing ethnic Albanian intellectuals and destroying non-Serb property.

NATO pledged to pursue war criminals in Serbia amid reports that Serb forces were retaliating against ethnic Albanians for the NATO airstrikes.

"We already have reports coming out," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea told BBC radio. "We will have evidence to initiate war crimes prosecutions in the future against those who are carrying out these massacres. There will be no impunity for them."

With foreign observers and reporters ejected from Kosovo, there is little outside contact with Pristina. Phone lines and cellular phone systems have been destroyed in the NATO attacks.

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Foreign workers for international relief agencies, which were plentiful in Pristina before the attacks, have fled to Skopje. There is only dire speculation about the condition of more than 100,000 refugees within Kosovo displaced by nearly a year of fighting. Convoys led by foreign groups had been their only source of food and water.

When the aid groups left after the bombing started they left their stores of food and other supplies in warehouses in Pristina.

Kevin Cook of World Vision expressed a common concern about the fate of local people in Pristina who had been hired by the aid agencies, who were at times at odds with Serbian officials.

"I haven't heard from our people for days," he said. "I'm quite worried."

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