Kosovo Bloodshed Continues Unabated

Meanwhile, a loud explosion was heard Friday in the restive town of Kosovska Mitrovica that has been the scene of bloody clashes between ethnic Albanians and Serbs.

In London, a Defense Ministry spokesman said another 600 soldiers would arrive over the next three days in answer to NATO’s appeal for reinforcements to halt the worst bloodshed since the United Nations took political control of Kosovo in July1999 , reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

France said 400 of its troops were headed to the provincial capital, Pristina, and expected to arrive late Friday, while Germany said it would send 600 extra troops from an armored battalion Saturday.

While the violence which erupted Wednesday had abated by Friday, tensions still ran high with allegations about the causes of the bloodshed coming from various quarters.

A senior Italian general in the NATO-led contingent of17 ,000 peacekeepers, KFOR, told the Rome daily Corriere della Sera in an interview that the fighting – apparently sparked by the drowning of three ethnic Albanian children Tuesday – was premeditated.

"The wave of violence set off by the Albanians hasn’t shown signs of calming down. I believe they’ve been ready for some time to lay waste to Kosovo," General Alberto Primicerj said.

This echoed remarks by NATO’s military commander for south-eastern Europe, Admiral Gregory Johnson, who said Thursday the fighting seemed to have been "orchestrated".

Primicerj, who commands an international brigade of more than7 ,000, described how his troops evacuated Serbs from several towns to protect them from large crowds of armed Albanians bent on setting fire to their homes.

The soldiers also led away four elderly Serb nuns after "a crowd of at least 500 Albanians had begun throwing petrol bombs at the monastery," he said.

The Serb Orthodox church reported that 16 of its churches and monasteries throughout Kosovo, many of them built in medieval times, had been vandalized in the two days of clashes. Many of them had been set alight.

The charge prompted the Serbian ambassador to France, Radomir Diklic, to tell Europe 1 radio in Paris Friday that some of the1 . 8million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had embarked on a wave of "ethnic cleansing" to drive out the80 , 000Serbs living there.

"The churches have been destroyed, the monuments destroyed, our historic memory is being wiped out," Diklic said.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica had made similar allegations Thursday.

"The violence was planned in advance and coordinated … this was an attempted pogrom and (an act of) ethnic cleansing," he said after an emergency cabinet meeting in Belgrade.