British soldier dies after being shot in Kosovo "in front of a partially built Christian Church"

AFP via Yahoo! News ^ | Tuesday December 18, 6:18 AM | AFP

[Pericles]

Tuesday December 18, 6:18 AM

British soldier dies after being shot in Kosovo

A British soldier with the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, KFOR, died after being shot in the Yugoslav province's main city of Pristina, a KFOR spokesman said.

The spokesman, Captain Ollie Major, said: "A British soldier was injured as a result of a gunshot wound. The soldier later died."

Major said the soldier had been on duty in front of a partially built Christian Orthodox church when he was shot.

He did not give further details and did not name the soldier.

Unrest between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, most of whom are Muslim, and its Serbian minority, mostly Orthodox, has dogged the UN mission there since it took over the administration in mid-1999.

Serbian forces had been forced out of Kosovo after 11 weeks of NATO airstrikes launched to protect the oppressed ethnic Albanians.

[Poohbah]

Any US intervention should have been predicated on smashing EVERYONE upside the head. Taking sides is stupid--because there are just some things that won't wash off, no matter how hard you scrub.

[joan]

"Reuters apologized for the error and blamed its local Serbian stringer for the false report. He also apologized."

Was there any apology to the Serbs after the Bosnian Muslim woman claiming she was raped by Serbs gave birth to a black child, found to be fathered by a French UN officer?

Perhaps if it was a white UN officer people would still hold up that tragic story of the poor Bosniak woman with the baby of a Serbian warcriminal as "proof" of warcrimes. People would be asking for updates of the story, hanging on the woman's every word of suffering. Saying she was such a saint to find in her heart to raise the child without blame. "I couldn't do that," they'd say, "Bosniaks are strong people, the proof is in this story...but damn those evil Serbs!"

People really fall for stories like these. It is amazing how easy it is to get people to readily believe these types of stories without genuine proof. I think using the emotional angle gets people's guard down and makes them remember the story and retain the (false) impression - perhaps for life.

[Robert Drobot]

Thanks for Post # 40 t-shirt.

[Vojvodina]

Pooshitface, shut it. Read the FR rules: NO RACISM.

[medved]

Wow. Are you telling me that the Serbs didn't harm a single Croat or Muslim between 1991 and 1994?

That's nearly the case. They didn't harm any INNOCENT croats or muslims in those years; virtually everything the western media has told/shown us about the balkans for the last dozen years is total BS. The worst of it all is Penny Marshall and the story the British media fed the world about the "death camps" in Tchornopoliye. Get over to tenc.net and order a copy of the vhs flick on the subject if you haven't seen it. I mean, this one is beyond anything Joseph Goebbels ever dreamed up.

[Poohbah]

They didn't harm any INNOCENT croats or muslims in those years

Oh, I get it. EVERY damn Croatian and Muslim wherever the Serbs wanted to be was somehow magically guilty of SOMETHING.

[Poohbah]

How about "NO PROFANITY?" Oopsie...

[Vojvodina]

Serbian stringer in Croatia? That's a new one!

[No Truce With Kings]

Oh wait I forgot, the KLA is our ally.

The KLA was Bill Klintoon's ally. The Kosovo War was code-named Operation Distract Attention. Now the KLA is "discovering" oppression in Macedonia. Once they swallow that Greece is next.

I hope, eventually, the U.S. does the right thing -- admit that the KLA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Al-Qaeda, and tip them into the dustbin of history.

[Hoplite]

C'mon Colonel Kurtz, time to go before the grocery boy comes.

Can't have you depriving us of the next Tesla and all with these unsound methods.

[Cleburne]

Sounds about like the jihadists. "Kill ALL of the EVIL AMERICANS!" To imagine that a region is composed entirely of evil people bent on destruction is sheer foolishness. There are plenty of nasty people in the US too, but I doubt you'ld like to get exterminated because of them.

[Poohbah]

Well, after watching the reactions of the locals to the vagaries of fortune, I kinda lost my sympathy for them. If this was just Franjo Tudjman's doing, I'd be more sympathetic. But he merely gave orders...and the average Josip Croat carried it out without even a whimper, heck, with enthusiasm. Besides, naming a street in Zagreb for Ante Pavelic is kinda over the top...

[Poohbah]

Well, the dueling cults of Balkan Victimhood (and their efforts to make victims of their neighbors) make me pretty sick of the whole lot of them.

[Poohbah]

A Croatian-American friend of mine went back to the old country in 1996, and quickly came home in disgust. Maybe they've renamed it after getting caught, but it was there.

[arm958]

I'm assuming you didn't intentionally post partial information, but according to the BBC, the same Royal Army spokesman (Captain Ollie Major) emphatically stated twice that the soldier did NOT die as a result of any hostile action. It was a single gunshot wound to the head. It doesn't sound like a Muslim-Christian thing. Go to BBC and check it out.