Albanians Yugoslavia

Hundreds of ethnic Albanians watched early Monday as a mob dragged a Serbian man and two Serbian women from their car, beat all three and fatally shot the man during a night of festivities celebrating Kosovo's biggest holiday. NATO peacekeepers sped to the scene in downtown Pristina shortly after midnight, finding that the car had been overturned and set on fire. United Nations police found the women lying on the ground, screaming for help.

War crimes investigators have unearthed 2,108 bodies from grave sites in Kosovo and expect to find more in the coming months, the chief prosecutor told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. U.N. investigative teams have examined 195 grave sites so far in their effort to establish evidence of systematic killing this spring of ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces, chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said. The findings will be presented to the war crimes tribunal.

So, is there serious evidence of a Serbian campaign of genocide in Kosovo? It's an important issue because the NATO powers, fortified by a chorus from the liberal intelligentsia, flourished the charge of genocide as justification for bombing that destroyed much of Serbia's economy and killed about 2,000 civilians. Whatever horrors they may have been planning, the Serbs were not engaged in genocidal activities in Kosovo before the bombing began.

The ethnic Albanian men picking up home-winterizing materials at a distribution center in this village in southern Kosovo were frustrated and angry. "This isn't material to build a roof," complained Miftar Elshani, whose home was gutted by fire last spring when Serbian forces drove ethnic Albanians out of this war-torn province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. "It's only plastic sheets and sticks. The winter here is very strong. The wind can blow the plastic sheets away."

The star pupil of the Kosovo Police Service school's first graduating class drew thunderous applause Saturday when his commencement speech set forth standards to which the force will adhere. The promises delivered by Student Course Cmdr. Nuredin Ibishi, a.k.a. Kosovo Liberation Army Cmdr. Leka, were probably unique in the history of the world's police academies.

Ethnic Albanians were killed in revenge for NATO strikes during the Kosovo conflict, Serbia's deputy minister for information said in a British television report to be aired Sunday. "I don't want to say that there were no cases of retribution during the bombing--but during the bombing--and I emphasize that," Miodrag Popovic told the BBC.

When marauding Serbian forces pulled out of this devastated city at war's end in June, they took key parts of their beloved Pecko brewery with them: The already bottled beer. The empty brown bottles waiting to be filled with beer. More than 40 delivery trucks that distributed the beer. But they left the beer-making equipment.

The church was built of stones quarried six centuries ago from the rock of Kosovo, and before last week's blast it had the power to make people believe in miracles. For generations, through endless cycles of war and foreign occupation, people came to the small Serbian Orthodox shrine behind monastery walls and asked the spirits of saints to heal them. Pilgrims reached out to touch caskets said to contain relics of St. Cosma and St.

British peacekeepers and U.N. police in Kosovo are searching for clues to a pair of late-night explosions that rocked central Pristina, killing one person and injuring five others, including several children. The first explosion in the provincial capital occurred shortly before 11 p.m. Friday on the third floor of a five-story apartment building. British peacekeepers believe that the explosion occurred outside the door of an elderly Serb's apartment, killing the man.

The school year began Wednesday in Yugoslavia's dominant republic, Serbia, with a lecture on NATO's "aggression" delivered in those schools not closed by a teachers strike, damaged by bombs or occupied by refugees from Kosovo. Teachers read out letters from Serbian Education Minister Jovo Todorovic reminding pupils of varying age groups of the evils of the Western defense alliance.