Serbia arrested 10 former Kosovo Albanian guerilla fighters yesterday suspected of involvement in killings and abductions in the former Serbian province of Kosovo in 1999, authorities said.

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said Serbian police searched 17 locations in the southern town of Presevo and arrested 10 ethnic Albanians.

"From June 1999 until October 1999, they were involved in at least 51 murders and 159 abductions in the town of Gnjilane in Kosovo," said Bruno Vekaric, a spokesman for Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic.

Mr Vekaric said they were also suspected of torturing, looting and raping Serb and non-Serb civilians in Gnjilane, close to the Serbian border.

"They were all members of the Kosovo Liberation Army," he said.

The KLA waged guerilla war against Serb forces in 1998-1999. Serbia's response, expelling hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians, drew Nato into an 11-week bombing campaign to drive Serb forces out of Kosovo.

Some of those arrested did not live in Serbia but came to spend New Year holidays with relatives, Mr Vekaric said.

Presevo region, near the border with Kosovo, was the site of an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001.

Nato and EU diplomacy helped end the 2001 insurgency in Presevo Valley but Albanians in the region are angry at a lack of economic development and investment.

Riza Halimi, an ethnic Albanian political leader from Presevo, accused Serbian police of excessive use of force during the arrest operation yesterday.

"It certainly does not contribute to the stability in the region," Ms Halimi told Beta news agency.