GORNJA KLINA, Yugoslavia -- Kosovo was convulsed with violence yesterday after some 1,300 foreign monitors withdrew to neighboring Macedonia and Serbian security forces took advantage of their absence to press an offensive against ethnic Albanian rebels.

Thousands of panicked refugees fled on foot, by tractor or horse and cart.

These were people who had abandoned their villages earlier this week for the comparative safety of Srbica, a town in the Drenica region that is the heart of the Kosovo Albanians' revolt against Serbian rule. Now, trudging through snow and bone-chilling cold, they were fleeing again, seeking safety deeper inside rebel-held territory.

Policemen equipped with flak jackets and with pistols in their belts blocked access to most reporters seeking to get into Srbica.

Action in Srbica

Journalists who did enter the small town described groups of gunmen, in white snow-camouflage and black masks, driving around the settlement evicting ethnic Albanians, and tanks and armored vehicles ranged in positions throughout the town.

The policemen outside Srbica waved through a convoy of armored jeeps, police personnel carriers and a water truck clad with crude metal sheets of armor, machine guns poking out of small slit windows. There was no other traffic on the road.

In recent days, Srbica's population had swollen with some 5,000 refugees from outlying villages. Yesterday, the town itself was under attack.

Shell fire resounded in the hills, and three houses in the town were in flames. A firefight was under way in the village of Poljance, which lies just south of Srbica and until Friday was under the control of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army.

It was just hours since the foreign monitors with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had evacuated to neighboring Macedonia. Their withdrawal followed the collapse of peace talks Friday in Paris and increased NATO threats of punitive airstrikes against Serbia for refusing to accept a NATO-backed settlement.

Army moves quickly

Even as the monitors left, in a coordinated motorcade of bright orange vehicles, they watched large numbers of Yugoslav army soldiers on the move.

"They made signs, they blew kisses. They are pleased to see us go," said one monitor, speaking of the soldiers on condition of anonymity. He had driven out from Pec, in western Kosovo, and passed a large column of armor headed the other way. There was also heavy military activity around the main army base outside Kosovo's capital, Pristina, he said.

"They are glad to see the back of us so they can finish the job," the monitor said. "They have a window of opportunity with the weather, and they are going to put the squeeze on."

Weather a factor

Kosovo lay coated in snow and beneath low clouds, and the roads were thick with ice yesterday -- not good weather for NATO to bomb, the monitor pointed out.

On Friday, President Clinton warned the Serbs that they had crossed the threshold by continuing attacks on ethnic Albanians. Nonessential foreign diplomats and their families began to leave Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia. NATO's secretary-general, Javier Solana, and other foreign leaders warned the Serbs that airstrikes could come within days.

But neither those warnings nor the weather deterred the Serbian police and Yugoslav army yesterday, as they pressed their offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army, the rebel force that challenged Serbian rule last spring.

KLA vs. Serbs

The Kosovo Liberation Army -- financed by the Albanian diaspora and backed by the heavily ethnic Albanian population of this southern Serbian province -- has grown in the past year from a ragtag force to a far more disciplined group increasingly equipped with sophisticated weapons as well as the standard Kalashnikov rifle.

But those weapons are still no match for the heavy armor of the Serbs. Tanks were ranged in firing position yesterday and mortars set up along the road looking south over the villages in the Cicavica mountain range.

Police manned a new position and aimed their guns from newly constructed sandbagged defenses. Columns of troop trucks and army artillery were drawn up beside the road.

Farther north, the main road to Belgrade was cut by fighting. Police said the rebels had attacked a police station at Luzane Friday evening. That could not be independently confirmed, but shooting and shelling continued much of the day.

Since October, the 1,300 foreign monitors who left yesterday have kept a check on army and police movements, trailing military convoys. The presence of the monitors appeared to have had a restraining effect.

As the foreigners left, many ethnic Albanians said they feared what the Serbs would do. A woman who gave her name only as Sofi was walking back to her house on the outskirts of Gornja Klina, bringing food to her husband and sons.

"There is a lot of fear, everyone feels it," she said. "When we fled the OSCE was there, they helped us. But now I do not know what will happen."

Many of the monitors expressed unhappiness at leaving, even though their job as unarmed monitors had been increasingly frustrating.

William Walker, the American head of the verification mission in Kosovo, acknowledged the problem. "None of us are happy," he said. "All of us would want to stay."

Pub Date: 3/21/99