Blast rocks Serbian bank in Kosovo
Associated Press Worldstream - January 1, 2008 Tuesday 10:58 PM GMT

By NEBI QENA, Associated Press Writer

PRISTINA Serbia - A powerful blast rocked the offices of a Serbian bank in southern Kosovo late Tuesday, officials said. No one was injured.

The explosion took place in the ethnically mixed town of Dragas, in the mountainous region bordering Macedonia, and targeted the only Serbian bank allowed to operate in Kosovo by the United Nations mission that runs the province, said police spokesman Veton Elshani.

Police said the blast ripped through the bank's offices, shattering windows and causing considerable damage to the building's structure.

The area where the explosion happened is inhabited by a Serbian-speaking Muslim community that shuns Kosovo's authorities and mostly follows instructions from Belgrade.

The bank has offices in areas where the Serb minority lives, surrounded by the ethnic Albanian majority and handles funds from Serbia earmarked for the minority in Kosovo.

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Explosion damages Kosovo town bank building
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - January 2, 2008 Wednesday

Text of report by Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA

Dragas, 2 January: Unknown perpetrators have thrown a strong explosive device at Belgrade Komercijalna Banka [Commercial Bank] building in southern Kosovo town of Dragas [town with substantial population of Slavic Muslim ethnic group known as Gorani], Kosovo police spokesman Veton Elshani told SRNA.

No casualties have been reported but explosion has caused considerable material damage.

Elshani has said that the police have started their investigation immediately after the explosion happened at about 2230 [2130 gmt]. They suspect that the explosion was cause by a hand grenade.

This was 57 bomb attacks in Dragas since the UN mission entered Kosovo in 1999.

Source: SRNA news agency, Bijeljina, in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 0932 gmt 2 Jan 08
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