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Author:  Gjeriqina Tuhina  


Publisher/Date:  Associated Press (US), September 14, 1999  


Title:  Returning Kosovar Serbs Fired Upon  


Original location: http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990914/V000922-091499-idx.html


PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Gunmen fired on a convoy of Serbs returning to their homes in the American sector of Kosovo, killing one and wounding others, NATO said today.

Elsewhere, two Montenegrin women -- aged 50 and 70 years -- were found dead Monday in their home in the western city of Pec, the NATO command said without releasing further details.

Since NATO peacekeepers arrived in Kosovo on June 12, Serbs, Montenegrins and other non-Albanians have been targeted for reprisal killings by ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for the 18-month crackdown that ended when President Slobodan Milosevic accepted a peace plan to halt NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia.

In a brief statement, NATO said the Serb convoy was fired on Monday afternoon east of Ranilug village, nine miles northeast of Gnjilane in part of eastern Kosovo patrolled by American and Russian troops.

NATO said the two wounded were a Serb man and woman, but details on the slain person were not released.

On Sept. 6, Russian troops killed three Serbs in Ranilug after they refused to stop beating two wounded Albanians and instead fired at the peacekeepers.

Serb villages in the area have also been targeted by sporadic mortar fire, which has killed at least two Serb civilians this month.

Elsewhere, Yugoslavia's Tanjug news agency said 13 prisoners in the French-controlled Kosovo city of Kosovska Mitrovica went on a hunger strike Monday to protest what they called the ``total disregard'' of Serbian criminal law in legal proceedings undertaken against them by the U.N. mission.

The group includes 11 Serbs, one Macedonian and one ethnic Albanian, Tanjug said.

In an open letter, the prisoners said they were jailed because of ``unfounded reports and testimonies'' against them from anonymous ethnic Albanians.

The violence is the latest example of the ethnic violence that NATO-led peacekeepers have been unable to stop, raising questions whether the U.N. mission can succeed in building a multiethnic Kosovo.

Milosevic and his civilian and military aides have criticized the job being done in Kosovo by NATO and the United Nations. The Yugoslav government has threatened to send in troops.

Those threats drew a sharp rebuff Monday from NATO's supreme commander for Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark, during a visit to Pristina.

``The re-entry of Serb forces is expressly prohibited, and therefore it would be a violation of the military technical agreement and the U.N. Security Council resolution, so it can't be countenanced,'' Clark said.

``They left, they're going to stay out,'' Clark said.

He did not mention the fact that the peace agreement does allow for the return of hundreds of Serb police and troops to guard Serbian Orthodox religious shrines. Little, however, has been said of this provision since the NATO-led mission began, and the agreement provides no timetable for the limited Serb return.


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