War crime suspects escaped
from United Nations jail!!!
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Divided
city: French peacekeepers
patrol
Mitrovica
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MITROVICA, Kosovo -- Hundreds of NATO-led
peacekeepers and U.N. police are searching for a group of Serb prisoners,
many charged with war crimes, who escaped from a jail in the northern
Kosovo city of Mitrovica.
Roadblocks have been set up on roads leading
to Serbia, while dogs are also being used to track the men through a wooded
area near the jail.
The province's United Nations administration
said the break-out took place on Saturday at around 9:00 p.m. local time
(1900 GMT).
A spokesman for the peacekeepers said 15
prisoners fled the facility but two were caught immediately.
The prisoners escaped by overpowering a U.N.
police guard who had accompanied a prisoner back to his cell after a phone
call.
They attacked the guard, tied him up and used
his keys to open the other cells. They then escaped over a barbed wire
fence.
Michael Keats,
spokesman for the U.N. in Mitrovica, said
three of the prisoners were being held on genocide charges and four for
crimes linked to the conflict between Serbs and ethnic Albanians. Four more
were accused of mass murder, one of murder and one of arson and theft.
The jail, in the Serb-dominated northern part
of the ethnically divided city, has been used as one of the main centres
for Serb prisoners in Kosovo.
"It is very hard to express the degree of
concern that I have over this incident," William Nash, a former U.S.
army general serving as the Mitrovica region's civilian administrator,
said.
"I am sure the U.N. police will conduct
a thorough investigation and take appropriate action."
Police and the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping
force are conducting operations in an effort to recapture the prisoners,
blocking roads and searching buildings, Keats said.
The incident comes
one month after three Serbs accused of genocide and war crimes escaped from
a hospital in the city.
Since June 1999, Mitrovica has come under the
remit of the Northern Command of KFOR, the NATO-led multinational
peacekeeping force.
Four thousand troops under French control --
2,500 from France, the rest from Spain, Poland, Russia, Belgium and the
United Arab Emirates -- are responsible for maintaining the fragile peace.
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