A human rights group yesterday accused Macedonian government forces of torturing and killing ethnic Albanian civilians and burning their houses in a village near the capital during an offensive that left 10 people dead.
Human Rights Watch said Macedonian police shot and killed six civilians and burned at least 22 houses, sheds and stores during a house-to-house sweep in the ethnic Albanian village of Ljuboten on August 12th.
Indiscriminate shelling killed another three civilians and one more was shot dead by government forces as he tried to flee the village, the report said.
Two days after the offensive, Macedonia's Interior Minister, Mr Ljube Boskovski, denied there was a massacre of civilians in Ljuboten and said five ethnic Albanian "terrorists" had been killed in fighting. The government said the offensive was in response to a land mine explosion that killed eight soldiers two days before.
But Human Rights Watch said its investigators found no evidence of rebels in the village at the time of the offensive, and said Mr Boskovski was in Ljuboten during the government sweep. It called for a probe by war crimes investigators.
"The Macedonian government must answer to the people of Ljuboten," the group said.
Meanwhile, Macedonia's parliament adjourned a marathon debate on the Western-backed peace plan late yesterday evening, keeping the disarmament of ethnic Albanian guerrillas on hold. The assembly's president, Mr Stojan Andov said he would meet leaders of parliamentary groups today to try to secure agreement to proceed directly to a vote.