 |  |  |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
| | |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
PRISTINA - NATO peacekeepers arrested 59 people in 24 hours and seized several arms caches in a mounting struggle against violence in Kosovo in which a girl was seriously injured by a grenade, officials said on Monday.
Peacekeeping soldiers have also been assaulted and shot at in recent days in what analysts say appears to be a creeping challenge to Kosovo's transitional international authorities by armed nationalists operating in various guises.
A French soldier was seriously injured when he was battered with rocks by ethnic Albanian militants trying to storm past a peacekeeping cordon into the Serb-dominated north of the divided city of Mitrovica on Monday.
Aggressive crowds of young men confronting French troops there since Saturday seem to have been orchestrated by ethnic Albanian guerrillas to exert pressure on the U.N. to make Serbs sign a mediated deal for free movement in the city.
But Mitrovica is only a microcosm of province-wide violence driven by vengeful ethnic hatred which is bedevilling the NATO peace force with armed U.N. police only now beginning to patrol after weeks of delay.
Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson, commander of the KFOR peace force, said recent attacks suggested the erstwhile guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army was losing control over hardliners in its ranks.
Jackson was likely to demand improved KLA compliance with international efforts to restore law and order in a meeting of Kosovo's military Joint Implementation Committee that began on Monday afternoon.
Ethnic Albanians say Serb paramilitaries who dropped out of sight when peacekeepers arrived in June or have since slipped back into Kosovo from the rest of Serbia have been responsible for a considerable amount of violence.
A major problem is discerning the degree to which Kosovo's lawlessness is perpetrated by individuals, tacitly backed or covertly organised in a region steeped in a culture of stealthy, informal power structures, intrigue and vendetta.
As French troops were scuffling anew with ethnic Albanians shouting KLA slogans in Mitrovica, a KFOR spokesman offered a litany of weekend violence, arrests and seizures of weapons at a news conference in Pristina.
Major Roland Lavoie said 59 people had been arrested since Sunday in connection with shootings, grenade attacks, caches or possession of war weapons and other threats to public order.
On Sunday night, two grenades were thrown at a house in downtown Pristina and one exploded, seriously injuring a 10-year-old girl. KFOR sealed off the area.
Two Serb women were shot in their Pristina homes in separate attacks, a Serb man was found with stab wounds and an unidentified man who had beaten to death was discovered on the roof of a building, Lavoie said.