SERBIAN FORCES RESUME ATTACKS ON MASSACRE VILLAGE

PRISTINA, Jan 17 (Hina) - Strong Serbian military and police forces on Sunday continued heavy artillery attacks on the village of Racak in the south Yugoslav province of Kosovo, Kosovo Albanian sources reported. Because of battles between Serbian and Albanian forces, the Serbian side blocked a road connecting nearby Stimlje with the towns of Prizren and Urosevac. The Kosovo Information Centre reported that Serbian forces were continuing with the arrests of Kosovo Albanian civilians. Several dozen Racak residents have been arrested during the day. A spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Verification Mission to Kosovo, Sandy Blythe, confirmed battles were being fought around Racak, and added the battles were the reason why OSCE verifiers had withdrawn from the area. Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova's spokesman Xhemail Mustafa assessed the attacks on Racak had been resumed to cover traces of the Serbian massacre of civilians in the village last Friday. The leading Kosovo Albanian party, the Kosovo Democratic Alliance, called on The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to urgently investigate the Racak massacre and charge those who had ordered and committed the crime. The chairman of the Kosovo Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms on Sunday forwarded a letter to ICTY chief prosecutor Louise Arbour to visit Kosovo as soon as possible. (hina) ha