Kosovo refugee alert

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - International aid organisations yesterday warned that thousands of Albanians were fleeing the upsurge of violence in Serbia's Kosovo province.

All communications with western Kosovo, where Serb forces have intensified their campaign to wipe out ethnic Albanian separatists, remained cut off yesterday.

The Serbs say their forces in western Kosovo are fighting guerrillas, who want Kosovo to be independent from Serbia. Refugees interviewed in Albania said they fled massive shelling by Serbian forces. They spoke of some 1,500 massed in the village of Junik.

Some 2,000 people from Kosovo crossed into northern Albania on Sunday and Monday. Thousands more have been displaced in the province itself, Kris Janowski, of the UN High Commission for Refugees, said in Geneva.

Virtually the entire Albanian population of the Kosovo border villages of Junik and Decane fled under the attack, he said.