http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/18/world/18YUGO.html

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, February 18, 2001

Death Toll in the Kosovo Bomb Attack on Serbs Rises to 11

By CARLOTTA GALL

PODUJEVO, Kosovo, Feb. 17 - British peacekeepers and the United Nations
police said today that 11 people including a baby had died in the bomb
blast that destroyed a bus full of Serbs escorted into Kosovo by Swedish
peacekeepers on Friday.

Dhiraj Kumar, deputy commander of the United Nations police in this area
of northeastern Kosovo, said seven bodies had been retrieved from the
wreckage of the bus and two severely injured Serbs died en route to a
hospital. Two other people are listed as missing and presumed dead; only
parts of their bodies were found in the twisted debris of the bus, Mr.
Kumar said.

Dozens were wounded in the blast, 21 of them seriously, and were being
treated in British and American military hospitals in Kosovo, British
peacekeepers said.

In Pristina, Kosovo's capital, United Nations officials insisted that
the toll in the bus bombing was seven dead. A spokesman for the
peacekeeping force, Maj. Peter Cameron, said however that it was
possible that as many as 11, or even 13, people had been killed, since
13 people were missing from lists of passengers thought to have been on
the bus.

By today the horrors of the scene had been removed after British
peacekeepers worked all night. New white gravel lay over what Capt. Mike
Taylor, spokesman for the Second Royal Tank Regiment, which guards the
road and nearby boundary with Serbia, said was a crater 12 feet wide and
6 feet deep gouged by the bomb.

The bombing was one of the bloodiest and most brazen attacks on Serbian
civilians since NATO-led peacekeepers and United Nations administrators
took control of the province 20 months ago. The attack has raised
tensions across Kosovo and set back the return of any Serbian refugees
incalculably, United Nations officials here said.

"I work in Washington and I've seen a lot but this was the worst thing I
have ever seen," a United Nations policeman said.

With some exceptions, Albanians expressed weariness at the violence, and
shame that Kosovo is still in the grip of advocates of terrorism. Some
accused the Serbs of orchestrating the attack; others cast it as
continuing revenge for the 1999 war.

Serbs around Kosovo were angry and hostile to questions but refrained
from retaliatory violence on this Day of the Dead, an occasion when they
visit their ancestral graves and more Serbs than usual stream into the
province that contains their most treasured Orthodox churches and
monuments and was the heart of the medieval Serbian empire.

About 2,500 people demonstrated in the northern town of Mitrovica - home
to the biggest Serbian enclave remaining in Kosovo - and commemorated
those who died on Friday by laying flowers on the bridge that divides
the town's Albanian and Serbian communities.

The explosion sent bodies and debris flying, British peacekeepers said.
As much as 500 pounds of improvised explosives had been placed in a
drainage pipe that ran beneath the tarmac road and was detonated by
remote control. The Swedish troops escorting the bus passed over the
spot just beforehand.

"The bomb was directly under the road," said Captain Taylor, who was one
of the first to arrive on the scene. "The whole road lifted up, and the
front of the bus exploded."

The bus was carrying 59 passengers. Troops, police officers and medics
poured in to pull the dead and wounded from the wreckage. At least one
baby and a young child were among the dead, the peacekeepers said, and
men, women and children were wounded.

British troops said they grappled to comfort distraught passengers from
the other buses, some of whom were relatives of those killed. They
shepherded them back to the border, as arguments broke out. The bus
drivers refused to go on, and the passengers declined to be taken on
another route through a tense area that is controlled by Albanian rebels
and is on the boundary between Serbia and Kosovo.

Adding to the confusion, the peacekeepers said, 200 more Serbs arrived,
and were supposed to be escorted to the southern enclave of Strpce by
American troops. Eventually, that group and the Serbs remaining from the
Gracanica convoy were ferried into Kosovo in helicopters belonging to
the peacekeepers.

Peacekeepers and the United Nations police were hesitant to draw
conclusions as to who carried out the attack and why, but suspicions
point toward local Albanians with some knowledge of explosives.

Two men, Albanians in their 20's or 30's from a nearby village, were
detained near the scene of the explosion and were being held. British
troops patrolling the high ground beside the road just before the
explosion stopped the men because they were behaving suspiciously,
Captain Taylor said. The men may have been lookouts for the person who
pressed the detonator, who was apparently positioned below the road
behind a ruined house, but was not caught.

Editors of the Albanian daily newspaper Koha Ditore wrote of their
horror and shame at the attack and called strongly for an end to the
violence. The publisher, Veton Surroi, likened the action to the tactics
of Slobodan Milosevic, the ousted Yugoslav president.

Baton Haxhiu, the editor of the paper, called the attack shameful, and
said violence was turning Kosovo into a horrible place. "We do not have
a second fatherland to live in, but the one that we have is becoming
unbearable," he wrote.

In Podujevo, there was a mix of emotions today. "We feel very sorry for
what happened," said Aslan Asllani, as he sat in his brother's cafe. "We
support a peaceful solution. We are very tired of violence." Other
Albanians voiced understanding, however, that some of their brethren
wronged in the past by the Serbs might still seek revenge.

Mr. Asllani and others had been hoping to welcome home hundreds of
Albanians still held in Serbian prisons. The Yugoslav Parliament began
to debate an amnesty law on Friday, but the session was suspended after
the news of the explosion.


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