"There's no way to live together anymore," said 34-year-old Zeljka Todorovic, who cradled her 2-week-old daughter, Teodora, on a mattress on the cement floor.
An ethnic Serb refugee from the 1990s war in Croatia, she said her family was planning to go north, to parts of Serbia where Serbs dominate the population.
"There's no other way," she said.
Smoke billowed from the ruins of 110 homes and at least 16 Serbian Orthodox churches burned in recent days. Pigs lay slaughtered in the center of a village, a warning to Serbs considering returning.
The continuing violence underscored the divisions that have polarized Kosovo's mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians, who want independence from Serbia, and Orthodox Christian Serbs, a minority in Kosovo who consider the province their ancient homeland.
Serb evacuees insisted the time had come to abandon all thought of coexisting with the Albanians, ignoring the hopes of international officials who came to Kosovo five years ago to end the war forged under the leadership of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
"This kind of activity, which essentially amounts to ethnic cleansing, cannot go on," said Admiral Gregory Johnson, who commands NATO forces in southern Europe. "That's why we came here in the first place."
NATO peacekeepers showed new resolve in cracking down on lawbreakers, proving they were ready to shoot to kill if threatened. Peacekeepers hunted down and killed a sharpshooter who fired at French forces from one of three high-rise apartment buildings inhabited by ethnic Albanians in the divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica, said a NATO spokesman, US Lieutenant Colonel Jim Moran.
Sporadic gunfire rattled the tense city into the early evening.
US peacekeepers in full body armor blocked the main road leading to the province's north, searching cars and people for signs of troublemakers and weapons.
"All this violence goes against everything we are here for," said Sergeant Major Paul Ragatz, 44, from Owatonna, Minn.
