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Kosovo Erupts in Clashes, at Least Seven Dead
Reuters
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; 1:38 PM

By Shaban Buza

MITROVICA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - Serbs and Albanians clashed in Kosovo Wednesday in the worst violence since NATO and the United Nations took control of the region in 1999 and at least seven people were reported killed.

Shooting broke out and grenades were thrown in the ethnically divided northern town of Mitrovica, a notorious flashpoint, as police and troops fired teargas and rubber bullets to stop Albanians storming the Serbian half of the town.

Hundreds of Albanians also broke through a U.N. police cordon outside the Serb village of Caglavica, south of the capital, Pristina, setting two Serb houses ablaze. Serbs were reported fleeing their homes as NATO teargas and stun grenades failed to deter Albanian attackers.

"This is a very dangerous situation. This is very large scale," said U.N. police spokesman Derek Chappell.

U.N. police sources reported four Serbs and two Albanians killed. They were unable to immediately verify reports that a fifth Albanian was shot dead by U.N. police during clashes at a Serb enclave near the western city of Pec.

There was also no immediate word on a report that one French peacekeeper in Mitrovica had died of his injuries.

"This is the worst violence that we've seen for some time," said a NATO official in Brussels. "The key thing is a call on both communities to really desist from violence. Go home."

KOSTUNICA RULES OUT MILITARY RESPONSE

In Belgrade, Serb parliamentarians urged the government to send forces to the Kosovo boundary, which NATO had ordered closed earlier in the day.

But Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica ruled out a military response. He said the scale of the violence was worrying, but Serbia had "no direct access to Kosovo and therefore...(no) real possibility of directly defending" Serbs under attack

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on local authorities to help restore order.

"He urges all parties involved to bring an immediate halt to the violence, which jeopardises the stability of Kosovo and the security of all its people," he said in a statement issued by a spokesman.

In the Pec district, Albanians were reported to have set fire to three Serb homes as some 30 Serbs took shelter in a church which was being stoned, Serb media said.

In Mitrovica, two red-and-white U.N. police jeeps burned fiercely and wreaths of tear gas drifted over the town as soldiers moving block to block cleared a security zone.

By darkness, peacekeepers had separated the two sides and imposed a curfew on Mitrovica. The situation elsewhere was less clear. Reports spoke of 300 Albanians and 70 Serbs injured.

Local media reported violence in several other places where the Serb minority live close to majority Albanians, such as Kosovo Polje and Lipljan south of Pristina.

Albanians had massed to vent their rage at Tuesday's drowning of two boys. A survivor was quoted as saying they had been hounded into a river by Serbs, who were exacting revenge for a teen-ager wounded in a drive-by shooting in Caglavica.

Kosovo has been under the rule of the United Nations and NATO peacekeepers since the Western alliance bombed Serbia during an Albanian guerrilla uprising, aiming to halt Serb repression of pro-independence Albanian civilians.