|
Serbian U.N. Translator Kidnapped
KOSOVKSA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (AFP) - A Kosovo Serb translator working for the U.N. was believed kidnapped early Thursday in the divided northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica, during a demonstration by 150 Serbs angered by dawn raids carried out by U.N. and NATO forces.
"During the protest, they destroyed an UNMIK police car and slightly injured an UNMIK police officer. They kidnapped the translator of the injured officer," said Major Steven Shappell, a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR.
The U.N. administration (UNMIK) police spokesman in Mitrovica, Dag Ebbestad, would confirm only that the translator, a woman, had disappeared.
"She disappeared from the scene ... and we have no information at the moment about where she is," he said.
At dawn, French KFOR troops and U.N. police mounted a joint operation to search three Serbian homes in the Serb-dominated north of the industrial town, KFOR sources said.
A cache of arms, including 15 automatic rifles, nine 80 mm anti-tank rocket launchers, seven hand grenades, 1,500 rounds of ammunition and two packs of plastic explosives were seized during the raids.
Three Serbs, including a 20-year-old Serbian woman were arrested, a spokesman for French KFOR forces in Mitrovica said.
According to Colonel Yves Kermorvant and Ebbestad, the raids were connected with investigations into a series of armed robberies, one of which resulted in a murder.
"It was not a politically motivated operation, it was about crime," Kermorvant said.
"When someone is arrested, they [the Serbs] get excited and angry, they start throwing stones. But when we explained the situation, they calmed down," he added.
Nevertheless, an ethnic Albanian house in northern Mitrovica was set alight early Thursday.
KFOR had deployed more units on the streets and were searching for the missing female translator. The situation was calm but tense with no further incidents reported, the same sources said.
Mitrovica has in the past been the scene of fierce clashes between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
The two communities are separated by the river Ibar, running through the center of the town, dividing the Serbs in the north from the ethnic Albanian south. But pockets of ethnic Albanians, Serbs and Roma gypsies live on both banks.
As in the rest of the province, NATO troops and U.N. police have been responsible for security in Mitrovica since Kosovo came under the control of the international community after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia which ended in June last year.
|
