Belgrade condemns terrorist attack Beta

Belgrade condemns terrorist attack
Beta - September 24, 2003

BELGRADE -- Wednesday – Belgrade has accused ethnic Albanian terrorists of trying provoke a military reaction in southern Serbia, after an army officer was shot three times in an ambush this afternoon near the town of Lucane.

“It is another attempt to escalate the conflict in the southern municipalities and former Ground Safety Zone. After a period of quiet, Albanian terrorist groups have resumed activities”, Boris Tadic, Serbia-Montenegro’s defence minister, said tonight.

Major Rahman Bandic was shot in the head, chest and pelvis when attackers opened machine-gun fire on his vehicle on the Lucane-Dobrosin road. He was taken to hospital in Vranje, and later transferred to the Military-Medical Academy in Belgrade, where his condition is said to be stable.

The town of Lucane is a former stronghold of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, an ethnic Albanian extremist group that led a wave of attacks on Serbian police and army units in 2001 in the Presevo valley, a region of southern Serbia bordering Kosovo.

Tadic accused Albanian extremists of trying to provoke the Serbia-Montenegro military and win the attention of the international community. He claimed they included members of the Kosovo Protection Corps, a civil unit created by the United Nations mission in Kosovo from the ranks of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army.

“Our operative data indicates that these are not only members of the illegal Albanian National Army, but also people from the Kosovo Protection Corps who have their own political benefactors,” he said.