Red Cross Aids Ethnic Albanians
QIREZ, Yugoslavia — Ethnic Albanian refugees swarmed a truck laden with food, infant formula and medicine Tuesday, desperately seeking help after Serbian police permitted aid workers into a besieged valley in Kosovo.
Serbian police have been barring or slowing aid groups and diplomatic observers from reaching tens of thousands of refugees driven from villages in the Yugoslav province, where ethnic Albanian rebels are fighting for independence.
The International Committee of the Red Cross reached the valley near Qirez, which is about 14 miles northwest of Pristina, the provincial capital.
But fighting stymied plans by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to send an aid convoy to Malisevo, now a stronghold for the Serbs.
“We cannot go into a battlefield,” refugee agency spokesman Kris Janowski said.
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