BELGRADE Fresh fighting was reported in southern Serbia on Sunday, a day after Yugoslavia demanded an urgent UN Security Council session to halt ethnic Albanian guerrilla attacks following the death of an army soldier.

It was believed to be the first military death in clashes with the guerrillas who emerged about a year ago to fight what they say is Serbian repression in the volatile area of Serbia adjoining UN-ruled Kosovo.

The remote Presevo Valley region, inhabited predominantly by ethnic Albanians, has seen an increase in skirmishes over the past week. The soldier died from injuries sustained in a clash on Friday.

On Sunday, Tanjug news agency said gunfire and heavy detonations were heard from different directions, including from the village of Gornja Susaja in Presevo Municipality.

A spokesman for the political council of the guerrilla group, known as the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), confirmed the fighting, saying it had continued there since the day before.

But while Tanjug said Albanian "terrorists" had opened fire, UCPMB spokesman Tahir Dalipi accused the Yugoslav Army of starting the fighting.

"They are shelling from all sides, even houses of the Albanians are getting shelled and as a result the civil population is fleeing," he told Reuters by phone.

---------------- Guerrillas Said Wounded -------------

Dalipi said three guerrillas were slightly wounded, but that UCPMB members were determined not to leave their positions.

NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers in Kosovo said they had heard the sound of mortar shells from the other side of the boundary but did not have details.

"As usual we are monitoring what is going on in the Presevo Valley and we noticed some mortar firing this morning," said KFOR spokesman Richard Kusak.

The Yugoslav Army earlier said a group of about 20 attacked one of its positions with bazookas, artillery and grenades on Saturday, damaging one of its armored vehicles, but said it suffered no new casualties.

Beta news agency said Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic called for the UN Security Council session in a letter on Saturday sent also to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and NATO Secretary General George Robertson.

He demanded that those behind the attack leading to the soldier's death be found and punished, and demanded urgent international action to stop the violence.

Svilanovic noted that there had been an increase in the number of attacks in and outside a 5km (three-mile) wide buffer zone inside Serbia by the Kosovo provincial boundary.

Belgrade has repeatedly complained that the terms of the cease-fire agreement with NATO which ended the 1999 Kosovo conflict, barring well-armed troops from the buffer strip along the Kosovo border, have given the guerrillas a free hand.

Four Serbian police were killed in November, and the guerrillas say about eight of their fighters have died over the last year.

(Reuter)