SARAJEVO, Bosnia — Following a two-week surveillance operation, police in Macedonia Saturday shot and killed seven men described by the Macedonian government as members of a terrorist cell that was planning to attack the U.S., German and British embassies in Skopje, the capital.
Police said at least five of the dead were Pakistani or Middle Eastern. Authorities had been following the men since detaining two Jordanians and two Bosnians last month and seizing computer disks with data on embassies and government installations in the troubled country, Macedonian officials said.
"They planned attacks on important buildings, foreign diplomats most probably from the U.S., Germany and the U.K. — those that were involved in the fight against global terrorism," said Macedonia's interior minister, Ljube Boskovski.
The men were killed early Saturday on the northern outskirts of Skopje after police tried to detain them, authorities said. When the police fired warning shots, the men returned fire, leading to a shootout, officials said. The police suffered no injuries.
This is the second time since Sept. 11 that authorities said they had prevented an attack on a U.S. facility in the Balkans, where thousands of troops serve as peacekeepers. U.S. forces and Bosnian police arrested a number of North African and Middle Eastern men in Sarajevo who were allegedly targeting the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and may also have planned attacks on the U.S. military, officials said.
Macedonian authorities have long maintained that Islamic militants from outside the Balkans fought alongside ethnic Albanian separatists in an insurgency that ended last year with a Western-brokered political deal that remains fragile. The claim was dismissed by Western officials at the time. But Saturday night, Western officials said there was every indication that at least five of the seven men killed were not ethnic Albanians. That raises both the specter of terrorism against Western targets in Macedonia and the possibility of renewed conflict in this divided country when spring arrives. A number of ethnic Albanian radicals have already rejected the political accord and are threatening to resume fighting. Rebels launched an insurgency in Macedonia in February of last year, demanding more rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up nearly one-third of the country's population of 2 million. Dozens were killed, and thousands of people were driven from their homes in six months of fighting.
The conflict ended when the guerrillas surrendered thousands of weapons to NATO troops after Macedonian leaders promised greater political and civil rights for Albanians. A German-led force of 1,000 NATO troops now patrols the country, but some Albanians regard the political agreement as a sellout and seem bent on carving an ethnic Albanian enclave or state out of Macedonia.
Macedonian officials have been saying for months that Albanian hard-liners have been restocking their arsenals with weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, for renewed guerrilla warfare.
Saturday's shootout took place on a dirt road leading to the village of Ljuboten, where intense fighting took place last year between government troops and guerrillas. The police seized four automatic weapons, two pistols, eight Chinese-designed hand grenades, one rocket-propelled grenade launcher with ammunition, an antitank weapon, a bazooka and flares. Also found were more than a dozen new uniforms bearing the insignia of the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army, which was supposed to have disbanded under last year's accord; officials said the men killed were wearing civilian clothes.
Among the personal items found on the men were Turkish bank notes and two plastic cards bearing Arabic writing, officials said.