NATO troops rush to quell Kosovo's ethnic violence

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro - NATO-led forces set up checkpoints and ferreted out snipers Friday to restore order in Kosovo after at least 28 people were killed in the worst ethnic clashes since the end of the province's war in 1999.

Mobs of ethnic Albanians systematically looted villages and apartments abandoned by minority Serb civilians during violence that also injured hundreds of people, including peacekeepers and police.

Serbs driven from their homes camped out in a storage room at a NATO base in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, waiting for conditions to stabilize so they could leave the southern Serbian province and its uncertain future behind.

"There's no way to live together anymore," said 34-year-old Zeljka Todorovic, who cradled her 2-week-old daughter, Teodora, on a mattress on the cement floor.

An ethnic Serb refugee from the 1990s war in Croatia, she said her family was planning to go north, to parts of Serbia where Serbs dominate the population.

"There's no other way," she said.

Smoke billowed from the ruins of 110 homes and at least 16 Serbian Orthodox churches burned in recent days. Pigs lay slaughtered in the center of one village, a warning to Serbs considering returning.

The continuing violence underscored the divisions that have polarized Kosovo's mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians, who want independence from Serbia, and Orthodox Christian Serbs, a minority in Kosovo who consider the province their ancient homeland.

Serb evacuees insisted the time had come to abandon all thought of coexisting with the province's ethnic Albanians, ignoring the hopes of international officials who came to Kosovo five years ago to end the war forged under the leadership of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

"This kind of activity, which essentially amounts to ethnic cleansing, cannot go on," said Adm. Gregory Johnson, who commands NATO forces in southern Europe. "That's why we came here in the first place."

NATO peacekeepers showed new resolve in cracking down on lawbreakers, proving they were ready to shoot to kill if threatened. Peacekeepers hunted down and killed a sharpshooter who fired at French forces from one of three high-rise apartment buildings inhabited by ethnic Albanians in the divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica, said a NATO spokesman, U.S. Lt. Col. Jim Moran.

Sporadic gunfire rattled the tense city into the early evening.

American peacekeepers in full body armor blocked the main road leading to the province's north, searching cars and people for signs of troublemakers and weapons.

"All this violence goes against everything we are here for," said Sgt. Maj. Paul Ragatz, 44, from Owatonna, Minn.

Authorities reduced the number of dead from 31 to 28 and tallied 600 people wounded in clashes triggering fears of a potential new conflict in the volatile Balkans. The injured included 61 peacekeepers and 55 police officers.

The crisis erupted Wednesday when ethnic Albanians blamed Serbs for the drowning of two children and began rampaging in revenge. The ensuing violence reignited long-simmering tensions between Serbs and ethnic Albanians that have spilled beyond Kosovo's borders into the Serbian heartland.

The United Nations and NATO - which was bolstering its 18,500-member peacekeeping force with reinforcements from the United States, Austria, Britain, Denmark, Germany, France and Italy - urged restraint in Kosovo and elsewhere in the turbulent region.

The province is U.N.-administered but is part of Serbia-Montenegro - the successor to Yugoslavia - with its final status to be decided by the United Nations.

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