Subject: One killed as blast rocks Kosovo home of top Yugoslav official
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 4:40:17 PST
From: C-afp@... (AFP)
Organization: Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Nov 22 (AFP) - A powerful bomb ripped
through the home of Yugoslavia's top representative in Kosovo early
Wednesday, killing one member of his staff and injuring another,
officials said.
The official, Stanimir Vukicevic, escaped uninjured from the
house, UN officials at the scene said. Part of the ground floor of
the house, in which seven people were staying, was completely
destroyed. No-one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The blast was condemned as "barbaric" by Kosovo's chief UN
administrator and the province's de facto governor, Bernard
Kouchner, who vowed to catch the "extremists" he said were
responsible.
"I am completely outraged by the contemptible attack," he
declared, in a statement released here.
"The wave of violence is a warning to the UN mission and to the
international community. The extremists are now ready to step up the
targeting of the Serb community," he said.
Vukicevic's driver, Goran Jeftic, was injured in the blast and
later died at a British military hospital and a security guard,
Goran Popovic, was hurt, officials said.
"One of the injured men died in Pristina hospital. The other is
lightly injured," UN police spokesman Charlie Johnson said. Four
people living in the Pristina neighbourhood where the explosion
occurred were being treated for shock, he added.
Major Paul Harrison told reporters at the scene that the attack
took place at 4:40 am (0340 GMT).
Vukicevic is President Vojislav Kostunica's representative in
the breakaway province where guerrillas from Kosovo's ethnic
Albanian majority population launched an armed rebellion against
Yugoslav rule in 1998.
Yugoslav forces responded with a brutal campaign of murder and
mass eviction which led to the intervention of NATO, which launched
airstrikes and forced Belgrade's troops to quit the province in June
last year.
Since then, Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations
as an international protectorate, but its final status has yet to be
decided. Kosovo Albanians are still determined to win independence,
but this is opposed by Belgrade and the province's Serbian minority.
The explosion destroyed the back wall of the house, a two-storey
detached building in part of Pristina mainly inhabited by
international officials and Serbs.
British marine commandos and military police officers sealed off
the scene of the blast while explosives experts and investigators
combed through the rubble at the back of the building.
An army officer, who asked not to be named, said that the blast
could have been caused by between five and 10 kilos of military
explosive. Windows in buildings within a 100 metre (yard) radius
were blown out.
Police at the scene told AFP that two men had been seen fleeing
the scene of the attack, believed to have been caused by a bomb
placed in the garden behind the house.