Thousands mourn boys after Kosovo bloodshed
Thousands of people gathered for the funeral in the village of Cabra, 25 miles north of the capital, Pristina.
NATO-led troops set up checkpoints every 10 miles along the main road leading to the village and warned that people would be turned away.
Italian peacekeepers put armoured personnel carriers on a hill overlooking the tiny hamlet to supervise the funeral procession. Helicopters patrolled over the ceremony, held on a hilltop overlooking the village.
Schoolchildren and playmates of Avni Veseli, 11, and Egzon Deliu, 12, sat in the front of the crowd, holding wreaths and small signs, reading 'stop the violence' and 'we want peace'.
The deaths of the boys triggered days of rioting, looting and arson by ethnic Albanians against Serbs.
The unrest left 28 dead, 600 injured and 3,600 homeless.
The United Nations, which has run the province since the end of the war in 1999, promised not to be deterred by the actions of a few in its efforts to bring about a democratic and multiethnic society.
"This was a setback," said Harri Holkeri, the chief UN administrator there. "But this is not the end."
The violence underscored the divisions polarising Kosovo's mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians, who want independence, and Orthodox Christian Serbs, a minority in Kosovo, who consider the province their ancient homeland and want it to remain part of Serbia-Montenegro.
International condemnation of the violence induced local ethnic Albanian leaders to speak out against the turmoil and call for a halt to the rioting.
Kosovo's government also set up a fund to repair the 110 homes and 16 Serb churches destroyed by the ethnic Albanian mobs.
The unrest began on Wednesday after the deaths of two ethnic Albanian children drowned in an incident blamed on the Serb minority in Cabra.
The village is just outside Kosovska Mitrovica, the tense and ethnically-divided city where the riots started.
Oliver Ivanovic, a Serb leader in the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica said the situation was still very tense despite a huge presence from NATO-led troops, known as the KFOR. Ivanovic said he believed ethnic Albanians would try and cross the bridge after the funeral.
"But considering warnings from the international community, and the awareness now of what their rampaging can do, I doubt KFOR will allow any violence," he added.
He estimated 300 extra soldiers had arrived to reinforce the northern part of the divided city.
Authorities investigated claims by a 13-year-old survivor, Fitim Veseli, that a group of Serbs with a dog chased the children into the Ibar River.
Divers continued searching for the body of Fitim's nine-year-old brother, Florim, who has been missing since the incident.
Women wearing white scarves of mourning wept after the children were brought home before burial. Zaim Deliu, the father of 12-year-old Egzon, stared down at the carpet and recalled that ethnic Albanians in his village had suffered during the 1999 war.
"Even after what they (the Serbs) have done to us, if I saw a Serb child drowning, I would have jumped in to help," he said.
"They drowned our children on purpose."
NATO bolstered its 18,500- member peacekeeping force with reinforcements from Austria, Britain, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy and the United States.
The reinforced units fanned out throughout the province to stem the worst escalation since the 1999 war.
That conflict killed an estimated 10,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians.
It ended only with NATO intervening against the Serbs, then led by former President Slobodan Milosevic, who had ordered a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. Kosovo has since been an international protectorate, whose final status is to be decided by the United Nations. For now, it remains a part of Serbia-Montenegro.
