Several dead in Kosovo clashes

Nato peacekeepers and UN police regrouped throughout Kosovo today to put down rioting and violence that left eight dead and hundreds injured in one of the bloodiest days since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999.

Melees broke out in every major city in the province as well as several enclaves where Serbs have eked out a sheltered existence since the war ended. Serb homes, churches and cars were set on fire as ethnic Albanians rampaged in revenge.

Clashes in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica came after ethnic Albanians blamed Serbs for the drowning of two of their children. The breakdown in order illustrated the failure of UN and Nato efforts to snuff out ethnic hatreds and set the province on the path of reconciliation.

“I urge all ethnic communities in Kosovska Mitrovica and in the rest of Kosovo to avoid further escalation, to act with calm and to refrain from demonstrations and road blocks,” Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a statement.

Meanwhile, in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia-Montenegro, demonstrators set the city’s 17th century mosque on fire after clashing with police trying to guard the building – one of the oldest in the city.

Demonstrators demanded that the government act to protect their Orthodox Christian kin in Kosovo from attacks by the province’s predominantly Muslim ethnic Albanians. Another mosque in the southern city of Nis was also set ablaze.

Mobs roamed the streets of Belgrade into the early morning hours today.

Trouble began amid reports that Serbs in a village near ethnically divided Kosovska Mitrovica set a dog on a group of ethnic Albanian boys, sending three fleeing into an icy river.

After authorities recovered two bodies – and searched for a third – ethnic Albanians and Serbs gathered near a key bridge over the Ibar River that divides Kosovska Mitrovica, long the flashpoint of tensions. The two sides traded insults, threw rocks and charged at each other several times before gunfire rang out.

Nato-led peacekeepers and Romanian special police units in riot gear moved in, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to stop ethnic Albanians from surging across the bridge toward the Serb side of the city, where another crowd had gathered.

The dead included six ethnic Albanians and two Serbs, said Derek Chappell, the chief UN police spokesman. Seven police officers were injured.

Lieutenant Colonel Jim Moran, spokesman for the Nato-led peacekeepers, said that 17 peacekeepers were injured.

“Nato is moving troops where they are needed most to take care of security situation,” he said.

Riots broke out throughout the province as word of the Kosovoska Mitrovica melee spread.

Hundreds of ethnic Albanians broke through police barricades to march on the Serb village of Caglavica, which is near the capital, Pristina.

Serb houses were set on fire and Nato troops and police used water cannons and tear gas to push the crowd back as authorities tried to regain control.

Violence spread to Pristina, where UN vehicles and other cars were set on fire. Machine gun fire rang out in a Serb neighbourhood of the city as the evening wore on.

In the nearby city of Kosovo Polje, a hospital used by the Serb minority was ablaze. Riots also were reported in the cities of Pec, Gracanica, Gnjilane, Prizren and Djakovica.

The violence was the worst since February 2001, when ethnic Albanian terrorists blew up a bus carrying Serbs, killing 11 and injuring 40. Other recent ethnic violence also targeted Serbs, who have gone from Belgrade-backed rulers to a besieged minority.

The Kosovo war ended in mid-1999 after a Nato air campaign drove Serb-dominated troops loyal to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic out of the province and stopped a crackdown on the independence-minded Kosovo Albanian majority.

An estimated 10,000 people died in that war, most of them ethnic Albanians.