Today saw a lot of fighting all over Kosovo. At one point we were on the main Pristina-Mitrovica road and we could hear small arms fire in a village a few hundred yards away, machine-gun fire from the right of the road, and heavy tank cannon from the left. At twilight we saw a village burning, Mijalic, going right up in flame, and through the smoke and fog of dusk we could actually see the red muzzle flashes of artillery firing up in the hills. We would count up to five or ten, hear the whoosh of the incoming shells, and then the loud impacts in or around the houses.

I walked through an open field, up to a tree line to get some pictures, some Albanian boys warned me not to go further than that. From that distance, maybe a kilometer away, we could hear sustained bursts of automatic weapons fire as well as the heavy stuff and the barking of the Pragas, also the smaller explosions of grenades.

It’s becoming clear that the Serbs have launched a major operation this past week even as negotiations go on in Paris. The OSCE mission is on the verge of collapsing. The Serbs deny them access, and their orange cars are not much good when it’s this hot. As the British general known as “DZ,” a senior OSCE official, said today, “we’re way past our sell-by date.”