Official sees "coordination" in shooting of Kosovo Serb police in ambush

Official sees "coordination" in shooting of Kosovo Serb police in ambush
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - September 10, 2005, Saturday

Text of report by Belgrade-based private BKTV on 10 September

[Presenter] New incidents have taken place in Kosovo. A member of the Kosovo Police Service [KPS], Sasa Durlevic, was wounded last night on a road in the vicinity of Strpce. Fire was opened from an ambush set up in the woods in the vicinity of an Albanian village, only one kilometre from a Kfor [NATO-led Kosovo Force] checkpoint. The target was a police vehicle which, beside Durlevic, carried two other ethnic Serb members of the police.

[Reporter] Sasa Durlevic, a member of the Kosovo Police Service, was wounded by two bullets in the vicinity of Strpce around midnight, when unidentified attackers opened fire at a Kosovo police vehicle carrying him and two other Serb members of the police. Following this attack, which took place on the Drajkovce-Tiraja [as heard] road, around 6 km from Strpce, the police vehicle continued driving without stopping to a hospital in Strpce where Durlevic, wounded in the arm and leg, was given first aid.

Durlevic was then taken to a hospital in the US Camp Bondsteel near Urosevac by a Ukrainian Kfor vehicle, where he was treated and is now not in a life threatening situation.

The fire was drawn from an ambush in the woods at a police vehicle which was in a regular patrol using automatic weapons, around 7 km from Banjica village where two Serb youths, Ivan Dejanovic and Aleksandar Stankovic, had been killed on 27 August, and two other had been wounded.

The situation in Strpce is tense, the head of the municipality, Stanko Jakovljevic, said. Jakovljevic told [Kosovska] Mitrovica-based Kontakt Plus radio that at the time of the attack, policewoman Silvana Bekocevic and policeman Novica Jovanovic were also in the vehicle beside the wounded Durlevic. Jakovljevic said that he supposed that there had been coordination during the attack between an ethnic Albanian policeman who was in the police station at the time and the attacker.

The situation in Strpce is tense and we organized unarmed street patrols which aim to inform the population about the situation. We demand that Kfor representatives ensure an escort for some 20 km of the Strpce-Urosevac road, which they must do, especially after the incident last night, the head of Strpce municipality, Stanko Jakovljevic, said.

SOURCE: BKTV, Belgrade, in Serbian 13:55 GMT, 10 Sep 05