Thousands of people were expected to attend the funerals on
Sunday in the village of Cabra, 25 miles north of the capital,
Pristina. NATO-led troops set up checkpoints every 10 miles along
the main road leading to the village _ and warned that people would
be turned away.
Italian peacekeepers placed armored personnel carriers on a hill
overlooking the tiny hamlet to supervise the funeral procession.
The deaths of the boys triggered days of rioting, looting and
arson by ethnic Albanians against Serbs. The unrest left 28 dead,
600 injured and 3,600 homeless.
The United Nations, which has run the province since the end of
the war in 1999, promised not to be deterred by the actions of a
few in its efforts to bring about a democratic and multiethnic
society.
"This was a setback," said Harri Holkeri, the chief U.N.
administrator here. "But this is not the end."
The violence underscored the divisions polarizing Kosovo's
mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians, who want independence, and Orthodox
Christian Serbs, a minority in Kosovo, who consider the province
their ancient homeland and want it to remain part of
Serbia-Montenegro.
International condemnation of the violence induced local ethnic
Albanian leaders to speak out against the turmoil and call for a
halt to the rioting. Kosovo's government also set up a fund to
repair the 110 homes and 16 churches destroyed by the ethnic
Albanian mobs.
The unrest began Wednesday after the deaths of two ethnic
Albanian children drowned in an incident blamed on the Serb
minority in Cabra. The village is just outside Kosovska Mitrovica,
the tense and ethnically divided city where the riots started.
Authorities overwhelmed by the rioting and lawlessness have been
unable to investigate the incident and verify claims by a
13-year-old survivor, Fitim Veseli, that a group of Serbs with a
dog chased the children into the Ibar River.
Divers were still searching for the body of Fitim's, a
9-year-old brother, Florim, who has been missing since the
incident.
The families of the two dead children collected their bodies at
the morgue in Kosovska Mitrovica and took them to the local mosque
for ceremonial washing before burial. As the body bags were
unzipped, Fali Deliu, 67, wept and placed a trembling hand on the
forehead of his nephew, Egzon, 12.
"Unfortunately their deaths brought more deaths to Kosovo and
this has made our pain greater," Deliu said. "Let's hope these
are the last ones."
NATO bolstered its 18,500-member peacekeeping force with
reinforcements from Austria, Britain, Denmark, Germany, France,
Italy and the United States.
The reinforced units fanned out throughout the province to stem
the worst escalation here since the war. That conflict killed an
estimated 10,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, and ended with
NATO intervening against the Serbs, then led by former President
Slobodan Milosevic, who had ordered a crackdown on ethnic Albanian
separatists.
Kosovo has since been an international protectorate, whose final
status is to be decided by the United Nations. For now, it
officially remains a part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor state
of Yugoslavia.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Last Updated: Mar 21, 2004