ORAHOVAC, Yugoslavia, Oct 30 (AFP) - Serbs and Gypsies say they are prisoners in this town in southwestern Kosovo.
"Get us out now, please. Living in Orahovac is worse than being in a concentration camp," Mirjana Jokic, a Serb, pleaded with a group of visiting reporters.
Her words were echoed by dozens of other Serbs who remained here after the withdrawal of Belgrade's troops from the Yugoslav province in mid-June after 11 weeks of NATO bombing.
They have a single idea on their minds -- to leave the province and seek shelter somewhere in Serbia.
More than 3,000 Serbs and Gypsies, the remnants of some 12,000 who lived in the area alongside about 38,000 ethnic Albanians, say they "are prisoners in Orahovac," and that they are unable to flee.
But officials of the NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR deployed in the area say people can leave Orahovac so long as they do not figure on a list of suspected war criminals.
"The Serbs are victims of the waiting situation. We are a military force; we are not here to determine who is guilty or not of war crimes," said German Major Thomas Scwendale, KFOR information officer in the region.
The decreasing Serb population insists that all the men deployed as reservists in the Yugoslav army or as police during Belgrade's crackdown on ethnic Albanian pro-independence guerillas of the Kosovo Liberation Armyare on the "blacklists," regardless of whether they have any connection with war crimes.
Hundreds of homes were destroyed in Orahovac and its surrounding villages during the war between Belgrade and the KLA in the 1998-99 conflict.
Dozens of Serbs were killed during a KLA attack on the town in June 1998, while several mass graves have been discovered of ethnic Albanians killed in the region by Serb forces before and during this year's NATO bombing.
Sergej Stolic, who was a police reservist and pulled out with Belgrade forces from Kosovo in June, said he "made the biggest mistake of my life" when he returned to Orahovac to pick up his wife and children.
"I cannot get out now. I came back because I did not believe my neighbours would claim I was a war criminal," Stolic said.
Describing their situation as "catastrophic," the Serbs say there is no electricity, food or heating in their part of town.
Almost the only way for them to get food is to wait, sometimes for days, for humanitarian aid brought by international and Serbian humanitarian organisations.
"Even the water has to be brought to us, and the only things we get are beans and pasta," said Jovana Cosic, a 70-year old woman.
I haven't seen fruit or vegetables for months," she said, adding that threats by local ethnic Albanians had been increasing "hour by hour."
"They threaten to strangle us if we do not leave," she said in a low voice. "Our sons and husbands have been arrested; they say we are all war criminals."
Two babies were born this summer in basements with no electricity or water, AFP was told.
Snezana Matic, 17, said her father was abducted by local Albanians, while her mother, seriously ill, "needs to be taken away from here."
"But we have no one to turn to," Matic said in a shaking voice.
As a bus with Belgrade-based foreign and local reporters aboard and marked with Red Cross signs and stickers signalling "humanitarian aid" reached the Serb part of the town, dozens of Serb and Gypsy children rushed to the vehicle, believing they would be able to board it and leave Orahovac.
At least 30 men approached an AFP reporter, asking for help to leave town. Many of them stormed into the bus with their bags and hid behind the seats until KFOR soldiers noticed the fuss and pulled them out.
A number of them cried as they stepped down from the bus to head back to their homes.
Jasmina Radic, who is six months pregnant, and whose family has been sleeping in their basement since someone shot at their house recently, stood silently near the crowd.
"We have to get out before the winter, otherwise, we won't survive," she whispered, hiding her face.