Whatever the ethnic structure at the end of the rule of Serb kings and princes in the territory of the current day Kosovo, by 1912 the area was populated largely by Albanians. The following is a New Year's eve, 1912, historic account of Serbia’s return into current Kosovo territory and beyond to Skopje and Kumanova in Macedonia and on to the sea in Albania, for the coveted Albanian port of Durres, which Serb national ideology designated as Serbia’s exit to the sea. 

Thousands of Men, Women, and Children Massacred in March to Sea, Say Hungarian Reports.

Terrible Atrocities the Result of Deliberate Policy to Exterminate Muslims.
Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES .

Albanian prisoners of war being paraded in Belgrade after Serb Army's conquest of Kosovo in 1912.

LONDON. Tuesday, Dec. 31-—A Budapest dispatch to The Daily Telegraph gives details of atrocities in Albania and elsewhere, as contained in reports gathered for the Austro-Hungarian authorities. The correspondent says: "On the march through Albania to the sea the Serbs did not only treacherously murder and execute armed Albanians, but their beast-like cruelty did not stop at falling upon unarmed and defenseless persons, old men and women, children and infants at the breast."

The Serb officers, intoxicated by their victory, declared that the most effectual pacification of Albania would be the total extermination of the Muslim Albanians. This mot d'ordre was quickly adopted by the Serb Army of occupation and put into practice.

"Between Kumanova and Skopje some 3,000 persons were done to death. Near Pristina 5,000, exclusively Albanians, fell beneath the hands of the Serbs, not in honorable fight, but by unjustifiable murder.

"To carry out these crimes the maddened soldiers even invented new methods of cruelty to satisfy their lust for blood. In many villages all the houses were set afire, and as the most fortunate inhabitants fled before the flames they were shot down like rata. Men were shot in the sight of their wives and children, and afterward the helpless women were forced to watch their children literally carved to pieces with bayonets.

"Executions were the daily diversion of the Serb soldiers. In every house in which arms were found all the inhabitants were killed, being shot or hanged. On single days as many as thirty-six executions took place.

"The former Secretary of Premier Pasitch, Herr Tomiatch, says that during a journey from Prizren to Ipek he saw nothing, but villages burned to the ground. The wayside was lined with gallows, from which the bodies of Albanians hung. The road to Djakovica was like a gallows alley.

But the tale of the atrocities which were perpetrated in Albania was by no means exhausted. The deeds done in Prilep, Kosovo, Weschitsa, it is said, exceed everything which the Albanians had to suffer under Turkish rule.
An Albanian of note, who fled from Prizren to Graz, in Styria, and who studied in Austria as a youth, relates the following story:

"Whoever denounced an Albanian to the Serbs was sure the man would be shot. It happened repeatedly that persons who owed money to Albanian Muslims informed on them, designating them as traitors. They were invariably hanged and the debtor was enabled to purchase the house and farm of the victim at an absurdly low price.

"In Skopje unarmed Albanians were simply shot down by the Serb officers in the street, and if only a hunting knife was found in a house the owner was shot, no mercy being shown."

At Verisovitch the Serb Commander invited the fugitives to return and lay down their arms. After they had done this 400 persons were cut down. In the whole of Verisovitch only half a dozen Muslim families were left alive.

At Pana the Serbs killed their prisoners, while at Varos and Pristina the population was slaughtered.

The Serb officers themselves say they hunted out the Albanians, and one officer boasted that he shot down nine Albanians in one  day.

Even outside the boundaries of Albania the Serb soldiers perpetrated all kinds of atrocities. In the fortress of Nish, where many Turkish prisoners were brought, tragic scenes occurred. A man was trampled to death there for insubordination.

A doctor of the Red Cross says: "Wherever the Albanians were found they were slain without mercy. Women, children and old men were not spared. I saw villages in flames in old Serbia every day."

Near Kratovo Gen. Stefanovitch placed hundreds of prisoners in two rows and had them shot down with machine guns.
"Gen. Zivkovitch had 950 Albanian and Turkish notables killed near Sienitza because they opposed his progress."

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