By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 9 1998; Page A13

After three days of gunfire and bombardment by government forces in the Drenica Valley west of here, its central towns and villages were eerily quiet today. No traffic was moving, no fields were being worked, and only a handful of residents were seen outdoors during the first authorized visit by foreign journalists in a week.

As many as 5,000 people appear to have fled at the outset of the massive assault undertaken four days ago by heavily armed Serbian police and special forces, whose presence in the region remains enormous. Armored personnel carriers, topped with machine guns, are parked at key intersections next to hastily erected bunkers made of sandbags and garbed in camouflage. Helmeted personnel with automatic weapons crouch in gullies and dugouts or stand on ridge lines for miles around.

The impact of the violence came into stark view during a walk through the village of Donji Prekaz, where at least seven houses lay in ruins. Their roofs had been blown away by mortar or artillery, their window frames were charred by fire, their stone walls had gaping holes that appeared to have been caused by tank cannons, rocket-propelled grenades and large-caliber machine guns.

The Serbian government has acknowledged killing 26 people in assaults in and around Donji Prekaz, all of them ethnic Albanians accused of committing acts of terrorism. But an Albanian human rights organization today published the names of 32 people it said had died there, including 29 members of one extended family that the police admit they specifically targeted -- the Jashari family.

According to the published list, 10 of those slain were younger than 16. Only Besarta Jashari, 11, is said to have survived. Albanian sources say that she lived by feigning death, then by letting some of the attackers who discovered her think she was from a different family. She was eventually released to another family in a nearby town after being questioned for four hours at a police center.

The Serbian Interior Ministry allowed reporters to visit the region today because its officials wanted to trumpet their victory over the Jashari family and others whom they accused of being allied with the revolutionary group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army. Supposedly formed in 1991, the militant KLA advocates the creation of an independent Albanian state in Kosovo -- a goal that is anathema to the Serbian government in Belgrade. Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population. The province lost autonomous status in 1989 and now belongs to Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.

Serbian authorities said that before they attacked the village, they went to each dwelling and demanded that any occupant come outside. Although many women and children had already fled, many of the men apparently remained to defend their homes. Police officials said that 30 people answered the call and came outside; they were "securely moved somewhere else," according to Veljko Odalovic, a Serbian who is deputy chief administrator for Kosovo.

Those who refused to come out were bombarded, officials said, although they refused to confirm the types of weapons they used. The Jashari family, which has been targeted by the police in years past but never with much success, paid dearly this time for its resistance to Serbian dominion. Adem Jashari, the clan's leader, reportedly was slain, along with a handful of siblings, spouses and scores of cousins. Serbian officials claim the Jasharis resisted the attack for two days with machine guns and bazookas, but reporters were not allowed to enter the homes to check for spent casings.

Some effort apparently had been made to clean the site. No bodies were present, and none of the tanks and helicopters that refugees said were used in the attack remained in the area. Nor were any of the special forces, who wore black masks, present along the road on which reporters traveled in a bus. But one home was still smoldering today, and in another two Serbian police officers peeked out through Venetian blinds riddled with bullet holes.

The region remains sealed off, with no food or medicine deliveries allowed to the estimated 5,000 refugees. Reporters were not allowed today to walk far from the bus or to attempt to interview the few citizens who remained behind.

The residents of the Drenica region have a long history of opposition to Serbian rule, and several other extended Albanian families recently were targeted by police. A week ago, for example, 10 male members of the Ahmeti family died in a fierce attack in the village of Likoshani; when their bodies were presented later for burial, they had no eyes, and their skulls had been smashed, according to witnesses.

Well-informed Albanians say a pregnant woman died in the Likoshani assault, and a mother and her two children were shot a few days ago in the nearby town of Srbica, which also was empty today. News of these deaths helped galvanize a silent protest of 5,000 ethnic Albanian women in downtown Pristina today.

Schoolchildren, mothers and grandmothers started gathering at 11 a.m. for the demonstration, which officially began at noon and lasted for just 15 minutes to forestall any violent police response. Instead of chanting slogans or making speeches, they stood and waved small white flags made of tissue paper or towels.

"We're here today to tell all the world that we want peace, nothing else," said an economics student, 23, who is active in one of the city's approximately 20 women's organizations. "We want them to stop the fighting. Pregnant women and children are not terrorists," said another woman in the crowd.

The protest was held on a narrow street in front of the United States Information Service office here. Several protest organizers said they picked the site because the office is the only permanent foreign diplomatic presence in Kosovo and because they thought their proximity to the office might make scores of helmeted Serbian police officers standing nearby reluctant to attack.

The crowd dispersed without incident, and the demonstration emboldened a coalition of Albanian leaders to call for a much larger protest in Pristina on Monday, apparently timed to coincide with a meeting of the "contact group" of senior Western foreign officials in Brussels charged with restoring peace to the former republics of Yugoslavia. The group is to debate new diplomatic or economic sanctions against Yugoslavia in response to the police attacks.

As many as 50,000 people may turn out for the protest, according to Western officials here. When a similar but smaller protest was held March 2, Serbian police beat many of the participants.

Meanwhile, reports filtered into Pristina tonight of new police shelling in the villages of Acareva and Jashanice, to the west of Donji Prekaz. Serbian officials have said they believe some of those targeted in Donji Prekaz fled to this area. "We will have to do whatever it takes to break their resistance," said a police colonel in Donji Prekaz, who declined to give his name.