Albanians

More than 50 ethnic Albanians were jailed for up to 60 days after this week's unrest in the southern Yugoslav province of Kosovo, the official Tanjug news agency said Friday. One foreign student at Kosovo's Pristina University said he had seen police seize at least 10 students in Wednesday's unrest. He said he and other students, counting their numbers later, concluded that at least 50 more had been detained. "Police in riot gear stormed through the dormitory, kicking down doors and firing tear gas canisters through the hallways," he said.

Fadil Sulejmani runs the University of Tetovo these days from the basement of its only building. His second-floor office is a death trap, he claims, because it's in the sights of Macedonian police snipers across the street. Many here dismiss the rector's behavior as paranoid, but no one doubts that his school is fighting for its life. A second Albanian-language university is being built a mile away, and this city isn't big enough for both.

Ethnic Albanian militants ambushed Macedonian security forces on patrol near the tense boundary with Kosovo on Saturday, killing eight and wounding eight others, a military spokesman said. The attack marked the first time in weeks that fighting rocked the border area. The relative calm had followed a massive Macedonian government offensive to crush an ethnic Albanian insurgency.

Thousands of ethnic Albanians on Wednesday marched through this Kosovo town to protest plans to resettle Serbs in the area. The demonstrators here carried placards with slogans such as "Shed blood has not dried up yet," "Don't hurt the wounds of Kosovo" and "Stop Serb colonies in Kosovo." Protesters said they would oppose plans by Kosovo Serb leaders and U.S.

Scores of Albanian dissidents scaled embassy walls and rammed the gates with trucks in Tirana in a desperate bid for asylum and escape from Eastern Europe's last hard-line Communist regime, officials said Tuesday. Diplomats said as many as 200 people have been given refuge in various embassies. But other would-be refugees who had gone to the embassies of Bulgaria, Cuba and Egypt have been handed over to Albanian authorities, the diplomats said.

As a postwar power struggle heats up in Kosovo Albanian politics, extremists are trying to silence moderate leaders with a terror campaign of kidnappings, beatings, bombings and at least one killing. The intensified attacks against members of the moderate Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, have raised concerns that radical ethnic Albanians are turning against their own out of fear of losing power in a democratic Kosovo.

Ethnic Albanian gunmen released five Macedonians abducted three days earlier. An ethnic Albanian rebel splinter group took responsibility for the kidnapping and threatened more abductions unless former rebels are freed from jail. No one was harmed during the release, which came after negotiations between the kidnappers and representatives from international groups, including the European Union and the International Committee of the Red Cross, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

Car horns blasted, factory whistles wailed and about 20,000 ethnic Albanians shouted "Glory to the Kosovo heroes!" in a public show of mourning for 29 compatriots killed in recent clashes. Yugoslav riot police swarmed over Pristina, the provincial capital, and were sent to nearby towns in anticipation of renewed protests by the Albanian Muslims, who form a majority in the province but are ruled by predominantly Orthodox Christian Serbia. The Albanians want greater autonomy from Serbia.

Italy has relented and allowed the last 1,000 of about 18,000 Albanian "boat people" to stay in the country while their cases are examined, officials said. Several hundred Albanians who had refused to leave a pier and a soccer stadium in the Adriatic port city of Bari were being transferred to cities around Italy. The decision marked the end of Italy's latest drama involving thousands of Albanians crossing the Adriatic Sea seeking jobs.