AS armed insurgents clashed with soldiers in southern Albania yesterday, the embattled Tirana government admitted the situation was out of control. Tirana nevertheless turned down a Western offer to mediate an end to the crisis.
The Foreign Minister, Mr Tritan Shehu, declared the situation in the Adriatic port town of Vlore to be "totally out of control". Two men in their 30s were killed yesterday by gunfire and many others wounded.
But Mr Shehu - considered the right-hand man to President Sali Berisha - insisted that there would not be a bloodbath.
"The government is going to reestablish calm with the fewest casualties and the least destruction," he said.
Four more civilians were wounded, one seriously, when insurgents clashed with soldiers near the town of Delvine, 15 km inland from the seaside resort of Sarande, an Albanian journalist in the area said.
Requesting anonymity, the journalist told AFP by phone that two army trucks had been captured outside Delvine and that the government troops had retreated.
The Greek television network Skai reported that the Albanian army was just 4 km from Sarande which was "encircled by the army and government forces". Two fighter jets were seen overflying the town, where the network said carloads of armed men had taken up positions at the outskirts.
"Eyewitnesses just told us that the battle is over and the troops withdrew," Mr Dimitris Stefos, a former prefect in Sarande, told Reuters. "The fighting lasted about 40 minutes and at least two soldiers were wounded."
He added: "The people won. The army, about 60 soldiers, got into trucks and drove towards Delvine."
Hospital officials in Sarande said they were treating four people for gunshot wounds received during the battle near the village of Styari, 10 km east of Sarande.
Also yesterday, insurgents seized an army tank in Sarande and drove it triumphantly through the streets, eyewitnesses said.
Hundreds of heavily armed insurgents had set up a defence line in the hills at the entrance to the town, saying they were determined to fight to the finish with regular army units.
Albanian authorities said yesterday that the army chief of staff, Gen Sheme Kosova, had been dismissed and replaced by Maj Gen Adem Copani, Mr Berisha's personal military adviser.
A statement from the prime minister's office published in the newspaper Rilindja Demokratike said Gen Kosova had been sacked for failing to ensure adequate security at military posts stormed and looted of their weapons by "terrorists".
Albanian television on Tuesday showed foreign television film of tanks on a road near Gjirokaster, Albania's main southern town near the Greek border. Foreign journalists have seen tanks moving south from Tirana on flatbed trucks.
The defence ministry said yesterday that the air force was making reconnaissance flights over the area but denied pilots had orders to shoot on civilians. It issued the statement after two pilots who flew their MiG plane to southern Italy on Tuesday and asked for political asylum told Italian reporters that they defected rather than follow orders to fire on demonstrators near Gjirokaster.
Several cases were reported over the weekend of army commanders and ordinary soldiers abandoning their posts without a shot after they were stormed by rioters.
Determined to regain control on its own, Mr Berisha's government yesterday indicated it would not welcome a mission later this week from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), of which Albania is a member.
An OSCE official confirmed later yesterday that the mission, to have been headed by the former Austrian chancellor, Dr Franz Vranitzky, had been postponed.
Mr Berisha tried to find common ground on Tuesday at a meeting with the opposition Socialists, but their talks failed, casting serious doubt on the success of any western mediation effort in the days to come.
Apparently confident that the chaos would not spread north, Mr Shehu said that an overnight curfew was being eased for all but the south of Albania, enabling shops to stay open until 8 p.m. (7 p.m. Irish time).
Also, in a gesture of goodwill, government officials said it had agreed to let the Red Cross into Sarande to deliver aid to the town's hospital. A delegation from the capital also went to another troubled southern town, Tepelene.
In another southern town, Gjirokaster, the situation was reported to be calm yesterday, apart from sporadic automatic weapons fire.
In Vlore, army troops were surrounding the town but have yet to move against the armed gangs who control it, residents said.
A group of 29 Albanians fleeing the violence in Vlore arrived in Italy after their small boat was intercepted by a navy frigate in the Adriatic, coastguards said.
Italy's RAI state television reported earlier that a boat with 15 Albanians on board had been stopped.
. A bomb blast injured four people, three of them seriously, in the capital of Serbia's province of Kosovo yesterday, according to police and medical officials. Kosovo is an impoverished province of southern Serbia with a mainly ethnic Albanian population that complains of repression from the Serbian authorities and wants independence.