Subject: Shots fired over French peacekeepers in Kosovo: KFOR
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 4:10:03 PST
From: C-afp@... (AFP)
Organization: Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Dec 24 (AFP) - Unidentified gunmen fired
warning shots over a patrol of French troops investigating an arson
attack on two Serb owned barns in northern Kosovo, a military
spokesman told AFP Sunday.
"The shots were fired to intimidate, over the heads of the
troops, but they could have easily have fallen on them," Captain
Herve Sandel said.
The peacekeepers, in two light vehicles, had been called at 8:30
pm (1930 GMT) Saturday to the outskirts of Banja, a Serb village
just to the north of the Drenica valley, a stronghold of ethnic
Albanian guerrilla activity.
Near the burning buildings, the troops saw two men, believed to
be armed with assault rifles, who fired a volley of shots before
making their escape, Sandel said.
The French, soldiers serving with Kosovo's NATO-led KFOR
peacekeeping force, did not fire their own weapons and none of the
patrol were hurt in the incident, he added.
Sandel branded the gunmen "extremists" and said their actions
were designed to destabilise the "delicate co-existence" between
Kosovo's rival Serb and ethnic Albanian communities.
Saturday was the day of Serbia's legislative elections, in which
many Serbs in the breakaway province voted, provoking some small
street protests from Kosovo Albanians who reject Yugoslav
sovereignty.
Kosovo's Serb minority has been the victim of a series of
ethnically motivated attacks since KFOR and the United Nations took
over the running of the province after a NATO bombing campaign
forced Belgrade to abandon a campaign to put down an armed
separatist uprising.
Recent weeks have also seen an upsurge in tension between Serbs
and the international administration, and two UN police stations in
Serb-majority areas of northern Kosovo have been attacked.