Eight Killed in Kosovo Ethnic Violence

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia-Montenegro – Ethnic Albanians traded gunfire with Serbs on Wednesday after blaming them for the drownings of two boys. The clashes left eight dead and more than 300 injured in one of the worst days of Serb-Albanian bloodshed since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999.

Riots broke out in virtually every city in the province – and in at least four enclaves where Serbs live – illustrating the failure of U.N. and NATO efforts to snuff out ethnic hatreds and set the province on the path of reconciliation.

Protests also swept Belgrade, the capital of Serbia-Montenegro. Thousands took to the streets, demanding that the government act to protect their ethnic kin in Kosovo. Demonstrators in the southern Serb city of Nis set a mosque ablaze – and then prevented fire fighters from putting out the flames.

In a melee near Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, hundreds of ethnic Albanians broke through barricades erected by U.N. police and NATO-led peacekeepers to march on the Serb village of Caglavica. Hand grenades were thrown and Serb houses were set on fire, Joseph said.

In Pristina itself, U.N. cars also were torched. In the nearby city of Kosovo Polje, dozens of Serb houses and a hospital were set ablaze, ethnic Albanians appeared to be in control on the streets.

Late Wednesday, armored personnel carriers and police in riot gear were placed in and around the U.N. headquarters in Pristina, to prevent attacks against the building housing the international administrators of the disputed province.

Riots also were reported in the western city of Pec, crowds clashed with peacekeepers and police in the town of Gracanica, and cars were destroyed in the city of Gnjilane.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the violence, saying it “jeopardizes the stability of Kosovo and the security of all its people,” according to a U.N. spokesman.

U.N. officials, diplomats and Kosovo’s leadership held an emergency meeting in Pristina and issued an unusual joint statement appealing for calm.

“The violence must stop and it must stop immediately,” the statement said. The officials called on demonstrators to disperse and said those responsible would be prosecuted.

The United States called on Kosovo’s political leaders to use their influence to restore calm. “The escalating violence must end,” the State Department said. “It threatens the process of democratization and reconciliation in Kosovo, and threatens the very future of Kosovo.”

The violence began in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica amid reports that Serbs in a nearby village set a dog on a group of ethnic Albanian boys, sending three of them fleeing into an icy river, where two drowned and a third was missing. Tensions grew as the morning wore on, fanned by a 13-year-old who said his younger brother slipped off his back as he tried to swim for safety.

After authorities recovered two bodies, ethnic Albanians and Serbs gathered near a bridge over the Ibar River that separates Kosovska Mitrovica, long the flashpoint of tensions in this southern province of Serbia-Montenegro. The two sides traded insults, threw rocks and charged each other several times before gunfire rang out and rioters set U.N. police cars ablaze.

The melee grew before police could separate the sides, with protesters hurling rocks and other objects at NATO-led peacekeepers.

The peacekeepers and Romanian special police units moved in, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to stop the ethnic Albanians from surging across the bridge toward the Serb side of the city, where another crowd had gathered.

“I heard several bursts of gunfire, and then just felt pain and went down on the ground,” said Ridvan Lahu, 41, who was shot.

The dead included six ethnic Albanians and two Serbs, said Derek Chappell, the chief U.N. police spokesman. A U.N. police officer shot and killed one of the ethnic Albanian victims, who was attempting to hit the officer with a brick in the western town of Pec, Chappell said.

In the predominantly ethnic Albanian southern side of Kosovska Mitrovica, hospital workers counted more than 200 hurt, including several who were shot. Floors were stained with blood, and doctors appealed for blood donations – even from weeping relatives.

On the Serb side, Dr. Milan Ivanovic said 80 Serbs were wounded.

With Orthodox Christian Serbs regarding Kosovo as their ancient homeland and mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians seeking independence, hatred between the two continues, with each act of bloodshed leading to revenge from the other side.

The province is administered by the United Nations but remains part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor state to Yugoslavia.

Wednesday’s violence was the worst since February 2001, when ethnic Albanian terrorists blew up a bus carrying Serbs, killing 11 and injuring 40. Other recent ethnic bloodshed also targeted Serbs, including one incident in which three members of a family were axed to death in their home and another in which two teenagers were shot to death while swimming in a lake.

Serbia’s prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, called an emergency Cabinet meeting, saying the rioting “showed a true nature of Albanian separatism.”

Fewer than half of the more than 50,000 NATO troops sent to Kosovo remain. The violence is a blow to hopes by Washington and its allies that troops in Kosovo and elsewhere in the Balkans can be redeployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas.

The Kosovo war ended in 1999 after a NATO air campaign drove Serb-dominated troops loyal to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic out of the province and stopped a crackdown on the ethnic Albanian majority. An estimated 10,000 people died in the war, most of them ethnic Albanians.