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Author:  Melissa Eddy  


Publisher/Date:  Associated Press (US), September 4, 1999  


Title:  U.N. Forces Search for Kosovo Clues  


Original location: http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990904/V000294-090499-idx.html


PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- British peacekeepers and U.N. police in Kosovo are searching for clues to a pair of late-night explosions that rocked central Pristina, killing one person and injuring five others, including several children.

The first explosion occurred shortly before 11:00 p.m. Friday on the third floor of a five-story apartment building. British peacekeepers believe the explosion occurred outside the door of an elderly Serb's apartment, killing the man.

Five people, including three ethnic Albanian children in an apartment next door, were lightly injured by shattered window glass.

``We believe that one Serb who lived here died and this was a vendetta action,'' said Lt. Blair Hall of the Royal Irish Regiment.

British peacekeepers and U.N. police and firefighters arrived at the area and cordoned it off following the initial blast.

About 30 minutes later, a second explosion rocked a neighboring building. No injuries were immediately reported.

It was unclear who caused the explosions, but an ethnic Albanian who gave his name only as Shar said the apartment next to the first blast had belonged to a Serb family, but is now inhabited by ethnic Albanians.

Sofije Aliaj, 40, moved to the apartment with her husband and six children a few months ago because their house in the Kosovo countryside was burned during the fighting. She had just put her children to sleep when the first explosion occurred.

``I was in the hallway still doing my housework and I heard the bang. We didn't know what was happening,'' she said. Three of her children suffered cuts from shards of broken window glass.

Also today, in the southern city of Prizren, an ethnic Albanian man died after he was shot in apartment, NATO reported. German soldiers were investigating.

Another ethnic Albanian man was found injured early today on the main road west of Klina in western Kosovo, the peacekeepers said. The man claimed five civilians beat him and stole his car.

Since June 12, NATO-led peacekeepers have been working to stabilize the situation in Kosovo. They have come under criticism from Serbs, who accuse them of favoring the province's Albanian majority.

The most recent flashpoint was over 15 bodies found in the American sector of eastern Kosovo. The Serbs were believed to have been killed in late July, several weeks after the peacekeepers entered Kosovo when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepted a U.N.-sanctioned peace agreement.

Serb forensic experts complain they have been denied permission to examine the remains.

The political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Hashim Thaci, has urged an end to revenge-taking against Serbs and urged Kosovo Serbs to return to the province. But his comments were sure to be ignored by Serbs, who blame the KLA for the wave of anti-Serb violence since NATO bombing ended in June.

Most of Kosovo's prewar population of 200,000 Serbs have fled since then, amid dozens of killings, abductions and other violence directed against them in retaliation for the crackdown against Kosovo Albanians by Serb forces.

Reporting on the situation in Kososka Mitrovica, the tense ethnically divided northern town, the state-run Tanjug news agency said NATO-led peacekeepers had to intervene twice to protect Serbs from ethnic Albanians.

The peacekeepers turned away men in uniforms of the KLA threatening Serb doctors and patients at the town's U.N.-run hospital, said Tanjug.

In the other incident, also Friday, a group of ethnic Albanians chanting inflammatory slogans tried to cross a bridge separating the two ethnic communities to the Serb side, but were prevented by French peacekeepers, who threw up barbed wire and other obstacles on the bridge, said the news agency.

There was no independent confirmation.


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