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| Europe |
| UN and Kosovo policemen killed in attack |
| 2004-03-24 |
| A United Nations policeman and a Kosovo police officer were killed in an attack on a UN car near Pristina late on Tuesday, the chief of Kosovo police said. The attack, in the village of Luzane some 20 kilometres north of the Kosovo capital, followed two days of relative quiet in a region that was shaken by Albanian-Serb ethnic violence this month. Twenty-eight people were killed in fighting. "In an attack against a police patrol, two policemen were killed - one international and one local," Kosovo police chief Sheremet Ahmetli said. "This is very sad for Kosovo." A Kosovo police source said a saloon car pulled up alongside a marked United Nations car and launched the attack before speeding off. Details were still unclear and it was not immediately known who had carried out the attack. In the worst flare-up of violence since NATO and the United Nations established control of the province in 1999, Albanian crowds attacked and torched Serb villages and churches last week, forcing 3,200 to flee. UN police estimate a total of 51,000 people were involved in 33 riots across the province of two million people. Serbia says the attacks aimed to "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo of remaining Serbs, estimated to number less than 100,000. NATO rushed in 2,000 more troops to help quell the violence. Its peacekeeping force, now over 20,000-strong, appeared to have reasserted control of Kosovo over the weekend. |
| Posted by:Fred |