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Rebels Ousted, Helicopter Lost, Macedonia Says
Macedonia said on Saturday its forces had driven ethnic Albanian rebels off hillside positions overlooking the city of Tetovo after four days of fighting, but gunfire continued into the evening, reports reaching New York said.
Shortly after nightfall an army helicopter crashed near the scene of the clashes, killing the army pilot and injuring 12 policemen, according to Macedonian and NATO sources.
The helicopter hit an electricity pole at the ski resort of Popova Sapka near Tetovo and got stuck in cables, a government spokesman is quoted by Reuters as saying.
"We think that after our successful offensive we have managed to push them back from their positions on the hill and at the same time we stopped another group from entering from Kosovo," government spokesman Antonio Milosovski said earlier.
But there was no indication that Macedonian forces had advanced up the steep hill and no independent evidence to back the claim that the guerrillas had been flushed out.
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