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THE TORONTO STAR, Monday, December 18, 2000

NATO patrol is attacked in Kosovo

Peacekeepers suffer no injuries in border attack

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Gunmen fired on a joint American-Russian
patrol yesterday as it tried to seal the boundary between Kosovo and
part of southern Serbia where ethnic Albanian rebels have been
challenging Yugoslav forces, the U.S. army said.

Peacekeepers suffered no casualties in the attack, the first reported
against NATO-led troops since ethnic Albanian rebels escalated
cross-border raids in November.

The joint patrol returned fire but it was unclear whether the attackers,
whose identity was unknown, suffered casualties, U.S. army spokesperson
Capt. Alayne Cramer said in a statement.

The attack occurred one day after a violent incident in northwestern
Kosovo, in which Serbs angry over the arrest of a motorist set fire to a
police station, stoned vehicles and briefly took seven Belgian soldiers
hostage.

Two Serbs died in the melee in the town of Leposavic and one was
wounded, raising tensions in this troubled province.

The U.S. statement said the shooting attack occurred about 1:30 p.m.
local time as the patrol was trying to seal the boundary near the
village of Gornje Karacevo about 50 kilometres southeast of Pristina.

Peacekeepers had just detonated a series of explosive charges to destroy
a section of road believed used by the militants when they received
small arms fire, the statement said.

``The Multinational Brigade East was continuing the boundary closure
efforts to prevent the flow of supplies and movement of armed ethnic
groups across the border,'' the statement added. ``No suspects have been
detained.''

The new government of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has been
urging the NATO-led force in Kosovo to crack down on the ethnic Albanian
extremists of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac,
known by its Albanian-language acronym UCPMB.

Last month, the rebels killed four Yugoslav police officers and seized
several positions in the five-kilometre-wide buffer zone along the
Yugoslav side of the boundary.

The zone was established in June, 1999 to prevent Belgrade's forces from
threatening the peacekeepers who took over Kosovo after the 78-day NATO
bombing of Yugoslavia, launched to force then-president Slobodan
Milosevic to halt his crackdown against Kosovo Albanians.

Yugoslav forces cannot use heavy weapons in the zone, so the ethnic
Albanians have been operating in the area with impunity.

They are trying to drive Yugoslav forces from the area, which has an
ethnic Albanian majority but is not part of Kosovo.


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