Ethnic pressures keep building in Kosovo

Summer of violence * Children shot at with machine guns at a swimming hole. * Bomb explodes on bus, killing 11 people and injuring 40. * Three members of a Serb family axed and clubbed to death in their home. * Serb man shot in the face while fishing. * Hand grenade explodes in a shop in an ethnically mixed village, killing one Serb man and injuring four.

When Ivan Jovovic was fatally shot at a swimming hole, his younger brother was away at a camp where children from Kosovo's rival ethnic groups were learning to live together.

Now their mother, Senka Jovovic, curses herself for ever encouraging tolerance in her sons. A Serb, she is certain that only ethnic Albanians would have opened fire with machine guns on 19-year-old Ivan and other youngsters as they were cooling off in the Bistrica River on Aug. 13.

"I taught my son to love all people, but now I regret that," said Jovovic, 44, covered from head to toe in black mourning clothes. "I'm sure Albanians did it. Who else could it have been?"

A 13-year-old also was killed and four other Serb youngsters wounded in the attack near this western Kosovo village. Because children were targeted, the shooting was shocking even by the standards of the violent Balkan province, convulsed by ethnic warfare in 1998-99.

The killings are considered the most brutal ethnic crime since February 2001, when ethnic Albanian terrorists blew up a bus carrying Serbs, killing 11 and injuring 40. Worse, observers say, the shootings came amid a rise in violent attacks this summer, many of which appear to be ethnically motivated.

Three members of a Serb family were axed and clubbed to death on June 4 in their home in the village of Obilic, their bodies then set on fire. On Aug. 11, a 43-year-old Serb died after being shot in the face while he was fishing near the village of Skulevo.

In the latest violence, a hand grenade exploded late Sunday in a shop in an ethnically mixed village in eastern Kosovo, killing one Serb man and injuring four others.

The violence is a blow to the so-called "internationals," the UN and NATO officials running the province and struggling to get majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs to live together in peace.

UN police spokesman Derek Chappell said the authorities haven't arrested suspects or determined motives for many of the recent attacks, including the slayings in Gorazdevac, and therefore cannot classify them as ethnically motivated.

Yet some of the attacks are clearly being committed by ethnic Albanians seeking to avenge atrocities inflicted on them by Serbs during the war, Chappell said. Nearly 10,000 people were killed when former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic launched a brutal crackdown on autonomy-seeking ethnic Albanian rebels.

"They killed my son to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo and create an independent state," Jovovic said.

But many Albanians are convinced their ethnic kin would never carry out such atrocities.

Some even claim that Serbs themselves carry out killings against their own people to seem like victims, hoping to establish a case for being ruled again by Belgrade or for having their own Serb state within Kosovo.

"Every attack against the Serbs is planned by Serbs and not by us," declared Llukman Haziri, a 38-year-old ethnic Albanian engineer in the provincial capital, Pristina. "They are ready to sacrifice their own children to reach their aims."

Among Serbs, who mostly live in enclaves guarded by NATO-led peacekeeping troops, there is growing fear and rage.

Gorazdevac lies 80km west of Pristina, in an area where Serb churches destroyed in the war still lie in ruins.

Villagers complain the international soldiers don't offer adequate protection and that ethnic Albanians attack them when they go into the woods to collect firewood or try to work in their fields.

As a result, they eat the chickens, pigs and cows that live in their yards and the vegetables, grapes and plums that grow in small gardens close to their small houses. Beyond that, they have nearly nothing and require military escorts to move beyond the limits of their enclave.

"This place is worse than a prison," said Milic Milicevic, a 50-year-old villager who used to be a farmer but is now too afraid to plant or plow. "At least in a prison you are safe."