An honor guard flanks the flag-draped coffin of one of two
U.S. soldiers killed when their armored personnel carrier
overturned during a peacekeeping patrol in Kosovo. The
bodies were being flown home from the airport in
Skopje, Macedonia

By Colleen Barry
The Associated Press
P R I S T I N A, Yugoslavia, July 20 — Hatred and violence are claiming new victims in Kosovo, even as old ones are just being documented by international investigators documenting war crimes.
     Four ethnic Albanians killed over the weekend near Klina, in western Kosovo, provide stark evidence that the ethnic hatreds that led to the brutal Serb-Albanian conflict are continuing despite attempts by NATO-led peace forces to cap tensions.
     Evidence of earlier brutality was unearthed Monday in the northern town of Podujevo, where local authorities exhumed the bodies of 19 victims of a Serb massacre — including 80-year-old Fariz Fazliu, who went missing on March 28, the Muslim holy day Bajram.
     The old man’s embroidered black and white belt, part of a traditional costume from the region, was still cinched around the body.
     “Even the grave is full of blood,” said Nimon Fazliu, the man’s nephew, believing he saw dark stains on the dank walls of the grave.

U.S. Peacekeepers Identified
Elsewhere in the province, American peacekeeping forces in Kosovo suffered their first deaths when an armored personnel carrier overturned, killing two soldiers and injuring three others, a spokesman said Monday.
     The deaths of the peacekeepers — Spec. Sherwood B. Brim, 30, of Dallas, and Sgt. William W. Wright, 27, of Clearlake, Calif. — occurred near Dmorovce, 10 miles northeast of Gnjilane, where U.S. forces are based.
     The accident came five weeks after U.S. forces, now totaling about 5,000, entered the province along with other NATO troops under a peace accord.
     NATO has struggled to prevent ethnic attacks, both by returning ethnic Albanian refugees seeking revenge against Kosovo’s Serbian minority and others by Serbs targeting Albanians.
     As hatred and violence persist in Kosovo, political fallout from the war is mounting in Serbia.
     For nearly three weeks, protests against President Slobodan Milosevic and his government have spread over much of Serbia as the opposition tries to capitalize on public anger over the defeat by NATO and de facto loss of Kosovo. But the opposition remains fractured.
     In an interview with the Montenegrin Vijesti daily published Monday, opposition leader Zoran Djindjic rejected cooperation with rival Vuk Draskovic, who has said that Milosevic’s ouster should not be the main opposition goal.
 

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