An ethnic Albanian family who fled Kosovo's capital Pristina protects their baby from the rain covering it with a plastic bag. (AFP)

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 2, 1999; Page A22

MORINA PASS, on the Albania-Yugoslavia Border, April 1 – Nuje Ahmeti had just risen Wednesday morning when government paramilitary troops pounded on his apartment door in Pristina, the provincial capital of Kosovo. Ahmeti asked the troops what they wanted. They told him to get his family out onto the street.

"Why?" he asked.

"You're going to Albania," they screamed.

"Why Albania? Ahmeti asked.

That was one question too many. He was struck in the face with a rifle butt, punched, kicked and dragged into the street. There, Ahmeti, his family and neighbors were forced to kneel with their hands behind their heads as troops rounded up everyone in the neighborhood. Then they were marched to a spot near the railway station, where they spent the night before being placed aboard rail cars for Albania.

Tens of thousands of people were gathered at the railway station, herded from all corners of the city, Ahmeti said. Gunfire rang out through the night. Houses burned. Soldiers forced them to shout "Serbia! Serbia!"

Men and women were forced to strip so they could be searched for money. Troops ripped necklaces from women's throats. Four women gave birth outside the station, Ahmeti said, and one soldier sneered at a new mother and told her: "Name it after NATO."

Ahmeti, his wife, mother and two young sons crossed the Albanian border tonight. Forced to walk the last couple of miles, they limped from exhaustion.

From rural hamlets to Pristina and its 200,000 people – where Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitary forces have undertaken the systematic expulsion of entire neighborhoods – Kosovo is being purged of ethnic Albanians. Nearly 120,000 have entered Albania in the past week, 25,000 today. And a seven-mile-long column of refugees, most of them from Pristina, was lined up on the Kosovo side of this border pass tonight.

Albania, the poorest country in Europe, is beginning to look overwhelmed by its humanitarian burden. At Morina Pass, the supply of buses and trucks taking refugees to the nearby town of Kukes – and from there to all parts of Albania – appeared exhausted. Hundreds of refugees sat in the open. When a jeep arrived with bread and water, dozens of people crowded around it, desperately grabbing food. Aid agencies here and in Kukes said today that the area's sanitary system is unable to handle the influx of refugees and that the risk of a cholera or hepatitis outbreak is rising daily.

Yet for all the confusion in this desperate place, refugees described their arrival as an escape from hell.

"Pristina is in a catastrophic condition," said student Xhaferr Qavdani, 19. "Houses are on fire. There is gunfire everywhere. We found two boys wounded outside our apartment by snipers. One died."

Qavdani was rousted at 11 a.m. Wednesday. Along with his family and neighbors, he was marched to the assembly area near the railway station. Today, he said, he was at a loss to describe the round-up.

"There were so many people, thousands and thousands," he said. "They are emptying Pristina. It's unbelievable."

Qavdani said police moved through the crowd, taunting Albanians and searching for money. "They said, 'Go to America,'‚" Qavdani said. "NATO will take care of you."

He also said that numerous armed militiamen were operating in the city, including a number of Russian-speaking groups. Qavdani said he had studied Russian and was certain that the men, who also were rounding up ethnic Albanians, were Russian.

"They didn't seem to know the city that well," Qavdani said. "I heard one of them say, 'Don't push the children; they are crying.'‚"

Qavdani was put on a bus Wednesday night in Pristina and driven to a village a few miles from the Albanian border. Tonight, he crossed into Albania, dressed only in the jeans and shirt he was wearing when troops came to his apartment building.

"I don't know what my future is," said Qavdani, who said he hopes to go to Tirana on Friday. "But I want to return to a free Kosovo."