Saboteurs try to blow up Kosovo railway bridge

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo -- Saboteurs tried to blow up a railway bridge in northern Kosovo just a couple of hours before a train carrying about 400 Serbs was due to cross it, the international KFOR peacekeeping force said on Saturday.

Major Ole Irgens, a KFOR spokesman, said the train had been stopped before it reached the bridge but the blast could have had grave consequences. An explosive charge placed on a pillar of the bridge had gone off around 9 p.m. on Friday, he said.

"This is quite serious," Irgens said. "We could have had a major thing going on here."

The train from the northern town of Leposavic was due to pass over the bridge near the city of Mitrovica at around 11 p.m. en route for Kosovo Polje, near Pristina, KFOR said.

The explosion shattered windows in nearby buildings, slightly injuring two KFOR soldiers, troops at the scene said.

The attack meant that stretch of the railway line could not be used for rail traffic for the moment.

"We need a week to reconstruct and to make it stronger," said Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe Perret, a spokesman for French forces who patrol the Mitrovica area. "This explosion is sabotage."

No suspects had so far been detained, KFOR said. Troops from the NATO-led peackeeping force had secured other railway bridges in the area following the attack.

Colonel Henri Szwed, the commander of an engineering unit working on the railway, said the attack was a clear pre-planned attempt to destroy part of the line but he did not believe it had been intended as an attack on the train.

Mitrovica is a flashpoint for tensions between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority and Serbs. Members of both communities have been targeted in violent attacks.