Soldier admits to massacre of Kosovo Albanians

A FORMER Yugoslav Army soldier told the Slobodan Milosevic trial yesterday how he helped massacre Kosovo Albanian civilians, including a baby that “screamed unbelievably loud” after it was shot.

The unidentified witness, who testified by video link to The Hague war crimes tribunal from the Balkans, was the first ex-soldier giving evidence against the former Yugoslav president to admit he killed during Serbia's 1998-99 crackdown on Kosovo's Albanians. Milosevic is on trial for crimes against humanity in Kosovo and Croatia and genocide in Bosnia.

The man, his identity concealed and known only as "K41", described how the brigade he joined in 1998 at age 19 shelled and stormed the village of Trnje in March 1999, shortly after NATO began bombing Yugoslavia in response to the Kosovo clampdown.