Macedonia civilians flee shelling

The rebels' insurgency has spread alarm through the region

More civilians have been fleeing villages in northern Macedonia after days of intensive shelling.

State radio said about 200 people who had been trapped by the fighting in the villages of Slupcane and Matejce had managed to escape.

There is continuing concern for thousands of civilians caught up in the government offensive aimed at pushing ethnic Albanian rebels out of the villages.

Slupcane was reported to be calm on Sunday after overnight skirmishes. But fighting continued in Matejce and explosions echoed around the village of Orizare, near the border with Kosovo.

There are unconfirmed reports that as many as 60 civilians were killed in the latest fighting.

And the international organisation Human Rights Watch says it has evidence of ethnic Albanian refugees being mistreated by government troops.

Having captured the rebel stronghold of Vakcince, the army on Saturday turned its attention to Slupcane, attacking it with helicopters and artillery.

It was the third day of the government forces' ground offensive.

EU mission

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, will visit the capital Skopje on Monday for talks aimed at showing support for Macedonia's coalition government.

Macedonian forces control the village of Vakcince

He will meet President Boris Trajkovski, Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski and other party leaders. He is expected to call for a resumption of political dialogue.

On Saturday a leader of the rebel National Liberation Army confirmed that Vakcince had been abandoned, but said his men were holding positions in the hills above the village.

Exodus

About 1,000 people left Vakcince on Friday, escorted by police on foot for 5km (three miles) over fields and then taken in buses to safety.

It is only us left in Slupcane, we can defend ourselves

Rebel leader

They followed an exodus of an estimated 2,000 people who fled mainly from Lojane on Thursday night, heading north into Serbia.

Several more villages further south are still controlled by the rebels - who emerged in the area three weeks ago - and correspondents say the army will not stop now until it has recaptured them all.

Political row

The army launched its offensive on Thursday as a political storm broke over a secret move by two ethnic Albanian political parties to negotiate directly with the rebels.

The row threatens to break up the governing coalition, with Prime Minister Georgievski accusing the two party leaders involved of taking their parties "into a terrorist organisation".

The move by Arben Xhaferi of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) and Imer Imeri of the Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP) to sign an accord on "common action" with the rebels provoked international condemnation.

The deal offered the rebels amnesty guarantees and a right of veto over decisions about ethnic Albanian rights, if they agreed to stop fighting.

Both the rebels and the mainstream ethnic Albanian parties want to see a change to the constitution. It would give Macedonia's large ethnic Albanian minority the same status as the majority Slavs and make Albanian an official language.

The rebels are also widely believed to be seeking to annex Albanian-populated areas to Kosovo or Albania.