Serbs have massed troops and combat armor along the Prishtina-Podujeva highway today.

Serb forces have been patrolling the streets of the town of Podujeva, while entrances to and exists from the town are being held under a strict grip, with motorists and citizens being routinely stopped, searched and harassed by police.

Automatic weapons fire was heard early evening yesterday, at 18:20 CET, at the crossroads in Podujeva on the road leading to Kërpimeh village. In the aftermath, a number of detonations of shells fired from Serbian positions at Peran village, four km north, were heard. Many Albanian citizens who happened to be on the streets of Podujeva were ill-treated by Serb police, local LDK sources told the KIC.

Meanwhile, Serbian media reported a Serb police officer was killed in last evening's incident in Podujeva.

Yugoslav army troops allowed to deploy three companies out of barracks in Kosova under a cease-fire agreement now have about 20 companies out on the ground in Kosova, OSCE monitors told Reuters on Wednesday. The Serb violation has reached the point where on the army side alone more than six times as many people are in the field as is allowed under a cease-fire supposedly backed by threat of NATO air strikes.

Meanwhile, Beatrice Lacoste, the OSCE spokeswoman was quoted by the Serbian Beta news agency as saying "the overall number of soldiers, tanks and police forces in Kosova is under the limit established by the agreement with NATO".

Asked by the Kosova Information Center (KIC), Ms Lacoste said today what she had said in fact was that Serbs were "not in excess of the limit", acknowledging that 20 Serb military companies were indeed out on the ground in Kosova.

Belgrade has massed troops and armor in and around Kosova to the levels generally agreed to be above the limit, some say in preparation for a huge Serbian offensive to destroy what has been achieved in the Rambouillet conference on Kosova.

A convoy of Serbian military and police troops, backed up by 30 vehicles, headed towards the village of Mihaliq today morning. Six Serbian combat vehicles left later, at 10:30 CET, also heading for this village.

Local sources said two members of the local Montenegrin community have been killed in yet unsolved circumstances.