On the morning of 27 April, Yugoslav government forces attacked the village of Meja without warning, shelling and burning homes. Serbian police units rounded up the village residents near the school. Between 100 and 150 men aged fifteen to fifty were separated from the crowd of villagers. The men were later further divided into groups of twenty and shot with machine-guns, and then additionally shot in the head. At the same time, early in the morning of 27 April, special police, along with the Yugoslav Army, expelled Kosovo Albanians from the
Reka e Keqe region between Gjakova and
Junik, near the border with
Albania. Starting at 06:00, security forces expelled residents of the villages of Pacaj, Nivokaz, Dobrosh, Sheremet, Jahoc, Ponoshec, Racaj, Ramoc and Madanaj, as well as residents of the Gjakova neighborhood of Orize. Government forces surrounded the villages, gathered residents and drove them on the road through Gjakova, some riding on tractor trailers, some on foot. Many villages were systematically burned. According to testimony, flamethrowers were also used during house burnings. A nineteen-year-old girl originally from Orize, whose father was kidnapped the next day in Meja, told Human Rights Watch researchers: Locals from across the area were forced to go towards Meja. Serbian policemen set up a checkpoint in Meja at which they waited for refugees from the surrounding villages. Many police officers wore "phantom" black masks. At the checkpoint, policemen and soldiers plundered the expelled villagers. Many refugees were beaten by police and threatened with death if they do not hand money and valuables. A 36-year-old woman stated: Following the raids, security forces separated men from the columns. A nineteen-year-old man who had arrived in Meja between 10:00 and 11:00 local time stated: Refugees who travelled through Meja that day confirmed that police officers seized men aged fourteen to sixty from their convoys. One woman said that her husband was removed from his trailer and joined a group of Albanians who were standing beside the road, where they were made to shout, "Long live Serbia! Long live Milošević!" Another witness saw his 42-year-old father being pulled from a car and held with a group of around 300 other men, who were then separated from the convoys and beaten in a drainage ditch. Refugees who passed through Meja between noon and 15:00 reported that they saw a number of men who had been arrested by the police, even hundreds. One witness (38), a teacher who passed through Meja at 23:00, told Human Rights Watch researchers: Another witness whom HRW researchers interviewed separately, told a similar story, adding that a group of men was kneeling with their hands behind their backs, surrounded by soldiers. Human Rights Watch researchers, who in the early morning of 28 April awaited refugees from Kosovo at the Morina border crossing, saw tractors with trailers carrying only women, children and the elderly. Ray Wilkinson, a spokesman for UNHCR in
Kukës, who met the refugees at the border, said that on 28 April about sixty tractors had entered Albania, and that six of the seven people said that some men were taken from their vehicles. ==Executions==