Additional NATO troops were on the ground in Kosovo yesterday as the Alliance struggled to prevent further violence in what it has termed "ethnic cleansing" by Albanians against Serbs.
The violence has forced around 900 Serbs in the UN-administered Serbian province to take refuge in NATO camps over the past few days, a source close to the multinational KFOR force said.
Admiral Gregory Johnson, NATO commander for southern Europe, denounced the violence, in which at least 28 people have died and more than 600 were wounded, as "ethnic cleansing."
PHOTO: EPA
Anger mounted in Serbia, the sovereign power in the province, which has been administered by the UN since the end of the 1998-1999 war between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
At a service in Saint-Sava Cathedral in memory of the Serb victims, Amfilohije, the Metropolitan Bishop of Montenegro, placed all the blame on the Muslim, ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo.
"To speak of inter-ethnic conflict in Kosovo is a big, hypocritical lie," he said. "What's happening in Kosovo is called a pogrom against a people and its history."
More than 200,000 Serbs fled Kosovo after the war, and only about 80,000 remain, guarded by about 10,000 UN and local police and the 38-nation, NATO-led peacekeeping force known as KFOR.
But they have come under heavy attack since Wednesday when a rumor that Serbs pushed three Albanian children into a swift-flowing river inflamed anger among the ethnic Albanians to the point of explosion.
Amfilohije bitterly railed at the international community for being unable to save medieval churches and monasteries that stood through 500 years of Turkish occupation but which have been torched in the current violence.
Kosovo is a holy land for the Serbian Orthodox hierarchy.
A source close to KFOR said 25 Serbian Orthodox religious monuments had been destroyed by fire, while around 900 Serbs had taken refuge in NATO camps over the past few days after fleeing violence from Albanians, the source said.
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