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THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (UK)

Kosovo in flames as Albanians renew war on Serbs
By Harry de Quetteville, Balkans Correspondent
(Filed: 18/03/2004)

Ethnic Albanians rose against the Serb minority across Kosovo yesterday
in co-ordinated attacks on them in the worst bloodletting in the
province since the 1999 war.

A French peacekeeper was one of at least 11 people killed in grenade
attacks and gun battles. About 250 were injured as the five-year peace
in Kosovo was shattered.

A Polish police unit tries to keep the peace in the ethnically
divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica

The trouble started in the ethnically divided town of Kosovska
Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, where thousands of Albanians armed with
heavy automatic weapons and hand grenades clashed with Serbs.

The explosion of ethnic violence apparently was provoked by reports that
two ethnic Albanian children had drowned in the Ibar River after being
pursued to their deaths by a Serb gang. The river is the dividing line
between the town's Serb and Albanian populations.

It is thought that hardline Albanian political parties had been stoking
existing tensions before the violence broke out. Fighting later spread
south of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and to towns in the west of the
province.

"It's very dangerous. This is a very large, comprehensive uprising,"
said Derek Chappell, a spokesman for the United Nations police force.

He added that the force's 10,000 officers in the province had been
mobilised.

"We are getting reports in all the time, from all over Kosovo. Wherever
there is a Serbian population there is Albanian action against them," he
said.

Mr Chappell described the violence as "by far the worst since 1999",
when a Nato bombing campaign forced the withdrawal from Kosovo of
Serbian troops sent by the then Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic,
to repress an Albanian independence movement.

After the campaign, about 40,000 Nato troops arrived in Kosovo to
monitor the tentative detente between the province's Serb and Albanian
communities.

Fewer than 20,000 troops remain, but many Serbs still live in ghetto
conditions, and very few who fled with the Yugoslav army in 1999 have
returned to their former homes.

Those who have remained now represent only about 10 per cent of Kosovo's
two million population, and they appeared to have come under
well-organised attack yesterday.

The first shots were fired as 3,000 Albanian protesters gathered at the
bridge that divides Mitrovica demonstrate against the drownings.

As Serbs gathered on the other side of the bridge, heavy machineguns
began firing and hand grenades were thrown. With ambulances rushing the
wounded to hospital, hundreds of Nato troops and riot police under
French command went to the scene, firing rubber bullets and teargas to
disperse the crowds.

Four hours later, 11 Nato troops were injured, two UN jeeps had been set
on fire and shots were still being fired, but the situation was a little
calmer. By then, however, the violence was spreading across the
province, with Albanians attacking a number of Serb enclaves.

One of them, the southern village of Caglavica, was the site of a recent
drive-by shooting of a Serb youth, which may have prompted the
retaliatory drownings of the Albanians in Mitrovica.

There, UN police erected a road block to prevent Albanians from the
capital marching on the village, where Serbs had set up their own
barricades to protest against the shooting.

But hundreds of ethnic Albanians broke through the road block, marching
on Caglavica. A UN spokesman later said hand grenades were thrown and
several houses were set on fire.

"These are well organised extremists leading these attacks," said Mr
Chappell. "They hate the progress of the last four years and this is
their final attempt to destroy any ethnic integration."

He called on leaders from both sides to appeal for calm, but reports
emerged from Serbia that interior ministry forces were massing on the
border with Kosovo ready to intervene if attacks on Serbs continued.

"We have closed the border with Albania and Macedonia," said Mr
Chappell. "But we can't hold the entire province back."

From the same source