Subject: Rebels fire mortar at Serbian target from Kosovo: NATO
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 4:00:09 PST
From: C-afp@... (AFP)
Organization: Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Nov 24 (AFP) - Rebel fighters fired at
least one mortar shell into the disputed Presevo valley region of
southern Serbia from a base inside UN-controlled Kosovo, a NATO
spokesman told AFP Friday.
Flight Lieutenant Mark Whitty said that radars operated by
Kosovo's NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force detected a shell being
fired from inside the breakaway province at around 5:00 pm (1600
GMT) Thursday.
It was directed at a target in the Ground Safety Zone, a
demilitarised buffer zone inside Serbia where fighting has raged
since Tuesday between separatist rebels and Serb police, he said.
"A helicopter was sent to investigate and spotted a group of men
unloading a truck near a group of abandoned buildings," US army
spokesman Sergeant Pat McGuire told AFP.
Russian and US troops attached to KFOR went to investigate but
the men had left the scene, leaving behind them a cache of arms,
including a 62 millimetre mortar, mortar shells, 2,332 rounds of
ammunition, a machine gun and grenades, he said.
Yugoslav officials have repeatedly claimed that ethnic Albanian
rebels fighting an independence struggle in southern Serbia have
launched attacks from Kosovo, which has been run by the United
Nations since the intervention of a NATO peacekeeping force in June
last year.
KFOR vowed Thursday to tighten security along the administrative
boundary between Kosovo and Serbia-proper, and closed down the
border crossing closest to the rebel-held village of Dobrosin.
The mortar attack came against the background of increasing
violence in Kosovo and southern Serbia, which has cast a shadow over
Friday's opening of the Balkans Summit in Zagreb.
On Tuesday the ethnic Albanian rebel Liberation Army of Presevo,
Medveda and Bujanovac (UCPMB), which is based in Dobrosin, launched
what a KFOR statement described as an "unprovoked attack" on Serb
police positions.
At least three police were killed in an ambush, Belgrade said.
Serb police in Vranje, southern Serbia, told AFP that gun
battles continued late Thursday in the area. On Wednesday a bomb
attack on the home of Yugoslavia's top representative in Kosovo
killed one of his staff.