One dead

One dead, four injured in police station attack in northern Kosovo
Agence France Presse - July 24, 2003

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, July 24 - One person died and four others were injured when two hand grenades were thrown at a police station in northern Kosovo late Thursday, a United Nations official told AFP.

The incident happened at around 9:30 pm local time (1930 GMT) in the southern part of the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica.

"One person has died from the explosion and four others have been injured," UN spokesman Gyorgy Kakuk told AFP by telephone. "Two of them are in critical condition."

The grenades were thrown at the police station, used by international and local officers, and its nearby parking area.

One of the injured is suspected of being involved in the attack, according to a UN official who did not want to be named.

"Two other persons were seeing fleeing the scene are are now being held for questioning," the official said.

The incident is the latest in a series of attacks on the security forces in the province believed to be linked to the recent sentencing of four former ethnic-Albanian rebels found guilty of war crimes.

International judges on July 16 returned guilty verdicts against the four for their part in war crimes committed against the civilian population during the 1998-99 conflict which pitted ethnic Albanian independence fighters against forces loyal to then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

One of the four was Rrustem Mustafa, a commander of the since disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, who was sentenced to 17 years jail for ordering the murder of five Kosovo Albanians, among other crimes.

But the verdict has angered Kosovo's majority ethnic-Albanian population, most of whom see the rebels as heroes who fought "the oppression of Belgrade."

Last week rockets struck a police station and justice building in the provincial capital Pristina, causing material damage but no injuries.

A police station in Podujevo, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Pristina, was also attacked with hand grenades.

Kosovo has been under UN administration since NATO bombed Yugoslavia to force the withdrawal of Serb troops in the spring of 1999.

nq/ks/lmf

July 24, 2003 Thursday 5:24 PM Eastern Time

SECTION: International News

LENGTH: 354 words

Kosovo-Serbia-Montenegro-blast

LOAD-DATE: July 24, 2003