Ethnic Albanians today alleged that masked Macedonian troops attacked their remote mountain hamlet in a pre-dawn raid, evicted them and set fire to their homes, mosque and school.
The Macedonian authorities angrily denied the charge, and gave a totally different account of events at the village of Runica yesterday.
There was no immediate way of checking the accounts on the spot. Runica lies in the hills above the villages of Slupcane and Vakcince, held by ethnic Albanian guerrillas and heavily bombarded by the army for much of the past three weeks.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Kosovo said today that 43 civilians from Runica had arrived in Kosovo late last night after trekking over the mountains.
"Some of them are wounded," UNHCR spokeswoman Ms Astrid van Genderen Stort said. The civilians said they had fled because of shelling.
Ms Arjeta Kamberi, a 19-year-old student, said there were no armed insurgents of the self-styled National Liberation Army (UCK) in Runica, which was suddenly filled with troops last night.
"The soldiers all wore black clothes and masks. They smashed our windows when everyone was asleep and dragged us out. Then they poured petrol on buildings and set them on fire," she said.
"They burned our school which was built for us by (Italian charity) Caritas, and they burned the mosque and the cattle and horses in their stalls."
Ms Kamberi said the villagers were herded onto a slope above Runica to see it burn before they were chased off. She said 12 families from Runica fled into the hills, but the Ahmedi family of seven was brought by helicopter to the main police station in the city of Kumanovo and held for six hours.