AP Macedonia called for a state of war in early May after a rebel attack killed eight soldiers but was dissuaded by Western powers, who argued it would inflame the situation, alienate ethnic Albanians and complicate the search for peace. 
The attacks marked an escalation in Macedonia's months-long conflict between government forces and ethnic Albanian militants, who say they are fighting for broader rights for their community. 
The insurgency erupted in February, claiming the lives of more than a dozen government troops and at least as many rebels. 
The government, dominated by the majority Slavs, regards the rebels as terrorists bent on seizing control of a large piece of Macedonian territory and merging it with neighboring Albania and the adjacent Kosovo province in southern Yugoslavia. 
The other major battle zone, northeast of the capital, Skopje, also was tense, with occasional gun fire exchange. Resisting a series of government offensives, the rebels remain entrenched there in a cluster of ethnic Albanian villages, together with a few thousand civilians. 
The largest city in the northeast, Kumanovo, which is controlled by the government, has suffered from acute water shortages because rebels control a reservoir that supplies the city with drinking water. 
Macedonian authorities have threatened to wipe out the rebels and end the insurgency, which many fear could spread to other Balkan regions. 
Ethnic Albanians make up about one-third of the population in this country of 2 million. 
Macedonian state radio reported three of the dead soldiers were from the southwestern town of Bitola. When several soldiers from that town died in clashes last month, riots erupted in Bitola, with Slavic residents damaging the shops and homes of local ethnic Albanians. 
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Macedonia on Tuesday, talking to his counterpart, Vlado Buckovski, who appealed for the United States to help stem the influx of money and weapons sent by ethnic Albanian ?migr?s from the West to the rebel movement here. 
The government also requested U.S. assistance in training Macedonian army commando units. 
The United States and its allies have condemned the violence in Macedonia and urged the Slav-led government and ethnic Albanian leaders to work out their differences peacefully.