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AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
GRACKO (YUGOSLAVIA), JULY 24: Fourteen Serbs were gunned down late Friday near this village in central Kosovo, the multinational peacekeeping force KFOR said on Saturday.
British Major Ian Seraph said a patrol responding to two reports of automatic gunfire, found 13 bodies in a field near a combine harvester, lying in a circle about five metres in diameter. A fourteenth body was found about 150 meters away, slumped over the wheel of a tractor.
All the victims were ethnic Serbs, and all had been shot, Seraph said, adding the bodies had been taken early Saturday to a morgue in Pristina, about 30 km to the north, for formal identification.
Canadian KFOR troops from the Lord Strathconas Horse (Royal Canadian) Armoured Reconnaissance squadron sealed off the area with Coyote vehicles, and military police were investigating, their efforts delayed by the discovery of a grenade at the crime scene.
It was the first time since KFOR entered Kosovo on June 10 that killing on sucha scale had occurred. KFORspokesman Major Jan Joosten said the peacekeeping force ``condemns this despicable act and calls upon all leaders of the communities of Kosovo to do the same.''
He said KFOR and United Nations police would do their utmost to track down the authors of what he called an ``awful crime.'' Seraph said the village contained about 80 Serb families and two Albanian ones, who had lived together peacefully.
He added that the killers had apparently not arrived by vehicles, and said the investigation would first concentrate on the type of weapons used, who would have access to them, and the routes used to reach the site. The victims were working in the fields, where wheat was currently being harvested. ``It looks like they were packing up,'' Seraph said, adding that the village was regularly visited by patrols, who reported no problems until Friday. The village residents reported no more missing people, and Seraph said the number of victims would remain at 14.
UN administrator Bernard Kouchner said the Serbs shouldnot still fear for their lives. He called for a change in mentality, admitting that with 30,000 troops KFOR could not be everywhere.
Many Serbs have fled Kosovo for fear of revenge from returning Albanians, who were driven out or murdered in a Belgrade-inspired campaign of ``ethnic cleansing'' by Serb forces before KFOR moved in.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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