Murder of swimmers starts wave of violence in Kosovo

The uneasy peace between ethnic Albanian and Serb communities in Kosovo has degenerated into daily bouts of violent clashes after the brutal killing last week of two young Serbs swimming in a river.

A Serb man who was shot in the mouth while fishing near a Serbian enclave in Kosovo died yesterday of his injuries in a Belgrade hospital. Also yesterday ethnic Albanians were injured when Serbs threw stones at their cars in Serb enclaves, and dragged them out and beat them. On Sunday, shots were fired at the village of Gorazdevac in western Kosovo where the swimmers were killed. Derek Chappell, a UN spokesman, called the gunfire an intimidation attempt.

Serbs on both sides of the border have been in uproar since the attack on the swimmers. There have been peaceful protests but also violent retaliation with hand grenades tossed into Albanian homes.

Communal murders and assaults are common place in Kosovo, but these killings were nastier than the usual. The temperature had hit 40C (104F) and young Serbs in the village of Gorazdevac were cooling off in the river Bistrica when a gunman fired a burst from a Kalashnikov. A man of 20 and a child of 12 were killed and four other young people were wounded.

A day earlier, the government of Serbia Montenegro in Belgrade said it favoured substantial autonomy for Kosovo, but only after a stable multi- ethnic society had been achieved. For many ethnic Albanians in the region, where they constitute 90 per cent of the population, this marked an attempt by Serbia to reassert the hegemony they have resisted for so long.

Nebojsa Covic, the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, was to urge the UN Security Council to crack down on Albanian extremists and apply the full force of UN police and Nato peacekeepers to stop such attacks.

After four years of UN administration, the final status of the disputed region remains uncertain. But many ethnic Albanians suspect the European Union is edging to supporting not their independence but Kosovo's autonomy in a Serbia-Montenegro-Kosovo federation, something very different.