PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, 20 March 2004 — NATO-led forces set up checkpoints and ferreted out snipers to restore order in Kosovo yesterday, promising severe measures to quash looting and rioting that destabilized a Balkan region still recovering from war.
Despite an overall lessening of tensions, mobs of ethnic Albanian lawbreakers got organized, systematically looting villages and apartments abandoned by Serb civilians in violence that has killed at least 28 people and injured hundreds more, including peacekeepers and police. Smoke billowed from the ruins of 110 homes and at least 16 Serbian Orthodox churches.
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. The NATO alliance cared for victims of the rioting, opening up their bases and creating makeshift camps for terrified Serbs and other minorities until the situation could stabilize. Ethnic Albanian leaders called urgently for calm.
Serb evacuees insisted the time had come to abandon all thought of ever establishing a coexistence with the province’s ethnic Albanians, ignoring the hopes of international officials who came to Kosovo five years ago to end the war waged 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, the commander of NATO forces in southern Europe.
