The UN Security Council has been told of a rampage of killing, burning, looting and terror inside Kosovo.

The account came in a report from the UN Under-Secretary General, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who led a team into the province late last month with the aim of assessing the future humanitarian needs in the area.

Briefing the Security Council in New York, Mr Vieira de Mello said his team had collected evidence of organised violence against Albanian civilians, aimed at permanently displacing them from their homes.

Mark Devenport reports

Mr Vieira de Mello's team travelled through Serbia and Montenegro to assess the damage done by Nato bombing raids - but the bulk of his briefing to the Security Council was devoted to the conditions he discovered inside Kosovo.

He said the access granted him by the Yugoslav authorities was more than he expected but less than he requested.

Organised violence

In one graphic sentence, the senior UN official said the accounts given to his team bore out the belief that during the period between 24 March and 10 April parts of Kosovo saw "a rampage of killing, burning, looting, forced expulsion, violence, vendetta and terror."

In some areas, Mr Vieira de Mello said, 80% of homes had been burned and two separate incidents of house-burning, witnessed by his team, undermined official Yugoslav explanations that the damage had been caused by fighting between Yugoslav and KLA forces.

The UN Under-Secretary General said all the arguments articulated by Belgrade, such as the need to combat KLA terrorism, did not explain or justify the magnitude of the brutal treatment meted out to Albanian civilians.

Even allowing for uncontrolled brutality, Mr Vieira de Mello said his team had collected indisputable evidence of organised violence against civilians aimed at displacing them and permanently deporting them.

Regarding Serbia, the UN official said the combined effect of sanctions and the bombing of the country's infrastructure would soon bring about a complex humanitarian crisis affecting the most vulnerable members of society.