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The Serb men had short-cropped hair and were of military age. Traveling in buses and private cars with Serbian number plates, they arrived in Serb- controlled north Mitrovica without weapons or uniforms, sometimes leaving the same evening, but often staying for three to five days.
Strictly speaking, their presence was not illegal. But it incensed Albanians in the southern part of the city, frustrated that they cannot return to their homes north of the Ibar River.
The stealth buildup of several hundred Serb military-age men, confirmed by U.N. sources, was probably the spark that ignited violence last month, according to a senior U.N. official in Pristina.
KLA ``toughs'' began to arrive from other parts of Kosovo, demands to cross the Ibar bridge rose and when French forces blocked the way, Albanians pelted them with rocks, leading to injuries, arrests and the closing of the bridge.
These tactics are part of a continuing effort by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to create a Serb enclave in northern Kosovo and thereby keep control of the largest share of Kosovo's mineral resources, the U.N. sources said.
Not quite a month after the Serb infiltration, Mitrovica is calmer but always on the edge of violence. It is an ethnically divided city, with Albanians living in the south and Serbs in the north.
Yesterday, an ethnic Albanian man driving a truck north of the city was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade that smashed through the windshield, also wounding a woman riding in the cab.
Twice last week, Albanians, protesting that they were blocked from attending school in the north, jeered at Serbs 500 yards away. Serbs hooted back, marched onto the bridge and threw rocks, leading French peacekeepers to close it.
In the view of senior U.N. officials, Milosevic wants to close off the north of the city and the largely ethnic Serb region up to the provincial border and call it a ``canton'' of Kosovo, with the clear aim of preventing its integration into the rest of the Albanian-dominated province.
U.N. officials say the international community will have no part of that and will devise every possible strategy to defeat it. But there is so far no clear winner in this contest of wills.
Mitrovica, however, contains the biggest single concentration of Serbs in Kosovo. A Serb spokesman said there are 15,000 Serbs in north Mitrovica. KFOR, the international Kosovo Force, estimates that there are 9,200 Serbs and 53,000 Albanians in the city. In 1998, by comparison, there were 95,200 Albanians and 9,500 Serbs there.
The confrontation is routinely depicted as an ethnic conflict, but the stakes in Mitrovica are also economic, for both Serbs and Albanians want control over the copper, zinc and coal in the nearby Trepca mines and the three smelters that processed it.
``I'm not sure that ethnic differences are the real problem,'' said French military spokesman Capt. Bertrand Bonnot. ``Seventy percent of the mining resources of Yugoslavia are here. Trepca is the most important resource for either Belgrade or for the people in charge of the administration here.''
He noted that the Serb plan for cantons included all the Trepca facilities in Mitrovica.
Security in the divided city is the top priority for the French military, but, increasingly, that translates into separating Albanians from Serbs. Meanwhile, spokesmen for the two ethnic communities say they are ready for battle.
Rrahmon Rama, KLA military police commander in southern Mitrovica, boasted that he and 10 KLA fighters could ``solve the problem'' in North Mitrovica within two hours. But Oliver Ivanovic, spokesman for the Serbian National Council in north Mitrovica, said Serbs are not leaving under any circumstances.