Hundreds of refugees flee Macedonia

Hundreds of refugees fleeing the assault by Macedonian forces on ethnic Albanian guerrillas have been crossing into southern Kosovo and neighbouring states.

A large group of civilians arrived in southern Kosovo overnight, after hours of marching across a snow-covered mountain pass.

The refugees -- most of them women and children -- were from an ethnic Albanian village near Tetovo.

Another group of more than five hundred refugees are reported to have crossed into Turkey from the Kapikule border gate with Bulgaria overnight.

It's thought that in all, more than twenty thousand civilians have fled the fighting in Macedonia, roughly half of them across the country's borders.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service