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BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) A Serb police vehicle set off a land mine Sunday near the Kosovo border that killed two officers, police said, in an attack they blamed on ethnic Albanian militants.
Six policemen were injured in the incident near Kursumlija, six miles north of Kosovo a region of south-central Serbia where unconfirmed reports of incursions by Kosovo Albanian militants have increased.
Attacks on Serbian villages close to the border also have become more frequent, according to the independent Belgrade newspaper Glac. NATO officials have confirmed some attacks over the past five months but could not say whether the rate of incidents has increased.
NATO-led peacekeeping forces have expressed concern about the border skirmishes and confirmed Saturday that an ethnic Albanian had been wounded in the area. Peacekeepers are closely monitoring the border, said Maj. Roland Lavoie, a NATO spokesman.
Regional police said Sunday that the vehicle had run over a land mine ''planted by ethnic Albanian terrorists,'' a phrase used to refer to the former rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The vehicle was part of reinforcements sent to help a police patrol, which reportedly was attacked by a ''gang of KLA'' three hours earlier while on patrol near the border.
The six injured officers were transferred to a nearby hospital, police said.
The agreement on Kosovo signed in June by Yugoslavia, NATO and the United Nations specifies that Yugoslavia's armed forces must maintain a distance of several miles from the province.
In Pristina, the Kosovo capital, NATO bomb disposal troops blew up a sport utility vehicle Sunday after discovering suspicious material inside, U.N. officials said.
U.N. police received a telephoned threat that a bomb had been planted near the office of the former police chief under the Yugoslav regime, said Cleveland Kachala, a U.N. spokesman. Police found a Jeep Cherokee with a broken window near the office.
The vehicle had suspicious material inside, and a military explosive ordnance team destroyed it in a ''controlled detonation.''