Serbian security forces conducted mopping up operations against separatist fighters in Kosovo yesterday after scoring a series of successes against the rebels, Serb sources said.
Both Serbian and Albanian officials said that Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebels had been dislodged from a formidable barrier they had constructed on the key road close to the village of Lapusnik.
The Serb Information Centre in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, said Serb police had also cleared many other barricades thrown up by the armed separatists on main routes between Pristina and Pec, in the west.
Following a weekend offensive by Serb police and paramilitary forces against the KLA in the centre of the province, fighting appeared to have died down yesterday, particularly along the Pristina-Pec road. Both sides have admitted casualties, and some reports said that up to 18 Albanians had died in the fighting.
Earlier yesterday seven Albanians were killed by Yugoslav border guards near Junik, a village about 10 km from the border, as they were fleeing towards Albania, the information centre said. The centre quoted a local official as saying that the seven had fired on the guards after being discovered crossing the border.
The KLA, which is fighting for Kosovo's independence despite a lack of support for that goal by the international community, was in control of approximately one-third of the Albanian-majority province until recently. It had cut the Pristina-Pec road as well as sections of another important axis linking Pristina with Prizren, a major town in the south of the Serbian province close to the border with Albania.
The Serbs' weekend operation appeared aimed at breaking up KLA-controlled areas and cutting off supply lines with Albania which the rebels are using as a rear base and main conduit for weapons and supplies.
Exchanges of fire also occurred close to the province's border with Albania over the weekend, according to official media in Albania and Yugoslavia, of which Serbia forms the major part. Albanian and Yugoslav media blamed each others' armed forces for opening fire on their respective border guards.
Albania lodged a formal complaint about the incidents. Albania's Foreign Minister, Mr Paskal Milo, said in a statement that he had called on Belgrade "to stop all provocations against the territorial integrity of Albania".
Meanwhile in Switzerland, police raided the homes of Kosovo Albanians and froze bank accounts on suspicion they were being used to fund Kosovo's rebels, officials said. It follows an appeal this month by the Contact Group of major powers for governments to intercept the flow of funds to the rebels.
Mr Juerg Blaser, spokesman for the Swiss federal prosecutor's office, said police had raided three homes early yesterday and frozen two bank accounts on suspicion of links with arms dealing. They seized some documents and requisitioned bank records.
"We have been told that the money in the accounts was being used for humanitarian purposes. But we have suspicions that it was being used in arms trafficking," Mr Blaser said. He said police were questioning three ethnic Albanians.
Western diplomats have increasingly been drawing attention to what they say is the role of substantial Kosovar communities abroad, notably in Switzerland, in supporting the independence struggle.
Switzerland was the scene of a secret meeting last month between US State Department officials and KLA rebels.
Earlier this month the German government said it was trying to stop supporters of the KLA extorting money from the estimated 140,000 Kosovo Albanians who live in Germany.
A Swiss-based group with links to the KLA denied the accounts in question had been used to buy weapons. "The money was being used to buy medicine. The accounts here have never been used to fund arms purchases," Mr Mahmuti Bardhyl, the spokesman abroad for the People's Movement of Kosovo, told reporters. He said the group was the political arm of the KLA.
It remains unclear who speaks for the KLA, but earlier this month a KLA spokesman, Mr Jakup Krasniqi, said that the People's Movement, active in Switzerland and Germany, had provided the basis for the foundation of the KLA in 1994.