http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/arts/03CHUR.html?ex=1081659600&en=f2123a6fed9a99e4&ei=5062

Witnesses said NATO troops responsible for guarding them did little or nothing.
Many of Kosovo's most important churches escaped the worst of the violence, but it will be difficult to assess the full extent of the damage done to Serbian culture, said Andras Riedlmayer, a librarian at the Fine Arts Library at Harvard, who made surveys of Kosovo's architectural heritage in 1999 and 2001. "One must assume," he said, "that less ancient and famous Serbian Orthodox churches, parish houses and monastery buildings that were attacked all contained items of movable religious heritage, sacred Scriptures, religious literature, icons; as well as parish records that were destroyed, damaged or looted."
 

A fresco of St. Symeon, a famous Serbian saint, in the badly damaged cathedral of the Holy Virgin of Lyevish, beg. of the 14th century. Albanian mob broke into the unprotected Serbian church and began their "Black Mass". Instead of incense and candles they burned fire which destroyed some of the most valuable medieval Christian fresco painting in Kosovo, which was carefully cleaned and restored by the best Byzantine art experts from Belgrade in the fifties.  Unfortunately damage made by Albanian mob on March 17 is in most cases irreparable. Kosovo has lost some of its most beautiful art which was admired by the cultured community of the entire world. Large scale photo is available at:  http://www.kosovo.com/pogrom_march/prizren1/06.jpg

Published: April 3, 2004

RISTINA, Kosovo — "Kishe kaput; very good," said the smiling boy, using an incongruous mix of Albanian, German and English to describe the remains of St. Nicholas, Pristina's only working Serbian Orthodox church. Next to him the four walls of the church were smoldering.

The previous night a mob of Albanian youths had set this mid-19th-century building on fire, largely unhindered by the police and the United Nations peacekeeping forces who patrol this province.

Farther down the steep road in front of the church lay the embers of a wood-framed bell tower that had somehow been knocked down and dragged into the street.

According to officials of the Serbian Orthodox Church, St. Nicholas is one of 35 religious buildings, including nine medieval churches containing numerous artistic treasures, that were either damaged or destroyed in two days of attacks by Albanians on Serbs and Serbian cultural institutions across Kosovo that began on March 17. The fighting left 19 people dead and more than 900 injured, the United Nations authority in Kosovo said. Church officials said an additional 112 churches in Kosovo had been destroyed or damaged since June 1999, when this Serbian province was put under United Nations control after NATO's bombing war against Belgrade.

After a period of uneasy quiet, the majority Albanian population has been growing restive about the slow progress toward independence.

But for Serbs, who now make up less than 10 percent of the population of 2 million, Kosovo is the cradle of Serbia's national identity, the Serbian Orthodox equivalent of the Vatican. Its churches, many founded by medieval kings, are symbols of a long-standing claim to the province that is still formally a part of Serbia and Montenegro, the state that replaced Yugoslavia. As such the churches were obvious targets for angry Albanians.

Ruins of the Holy Virgin Mary Church (down left) from 1315, built by the Serbian duke Jovan Dragoslav. The church was looted and completely destroyed by explosives in June 1999 although German KFOR troops have already been deployed in the area. From June 1999 until March 17 2004, 112 Serbian Orthodox churches (many of them from the medieval time were destroyed by Kosovo Albanian terrorists. Another 35 churches have been either completely destroyed or seriously damaged by K-Albanian mob between March 17-19. The total score shows that Albanians have destroyed more medieval Christian churches in modern Europe than any other nation in the world which clearly proves that behind the ethnic hatred lies also the innate religious intolerance and attempt to uproot Christian culture in Kosovo forever.