Ethnic Albanian Rebels Kill 8 Macedonian Troops

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia —  Ethnic Albanian militants ambushed Macedonian security forces on patrol near the tense boundary with Kosovo on Saturday, killing eight and wounding eight others, a military spokesman said.

The attack marked the first time in weeks that fighting rocked the border area. The relative calm had followed a massive Macedonian government offensive to crush an ethnic Albanian insurgency.

Militants launched a series of attacks in March in an effort to force the government to grant more rights to ethnic Albanians in Macedonia.

Saturday’s ambush started about noon when ethnic Albanian militants operating in the village of Vejce near the town of Tetovo, just outside Kosovo--a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia--fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades on a patrol, military spokesman Blagoja Markovski said.

Macedonian Defense Ministry spokesman Georgi Trendafilov said eight members of the elite unit known as the Wolves were killed.

An armored personnel carrier transporting policemen engaged in a de-mining operation was also hit, he said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski canceled a scheduled visit today to Romania, and government officials said a planned trip to Washington in early May is now uncertain.

Macedonian forces drove out ethnic Albanian fighters from strongholds in the hills of northern Macedonia in late March.

Macedonia has won strong Western backing for its fight against the rebels but is also under international pressure to make concessions to ethnic Albanians, who account for at least a quarter of the Balkan state’s population.