[sim] [ujedinjeno_srpstvo] Serbian population evacuated from Kosovo

[Miroslav Antic-SNN]

Title: Message






  
  
    
      Serbian population evacuated from Kosovo
      18.03.2004, 15.02
    
  
    
    
      
      BELGRADE, March 18 (Itar-Tass) - The U.N. police and the 
      international KFOR troops have evacuated in a matter of only a few hours 
      the entire Serbian population of Pristina and nearby villages, as well as 
      from the town of Obilic. This was done because of the riots, which erupted 
      in Kosovo on Wednesday. Albanian extremists had launched attacks that day 
      on Serbians, U.N. policemen and KFOR servicemen. 
      Twenty-two people were killed and more than five hundred 
      others were wounded in the course of the riots, Press Secretary of the 
      U.N. Police in Kosovo Derek Chepel divulged in Pristina on Thursday. The 
      situation is calm in Kosovo at present, he added. 
      According to Chepel, the bodies of twenty-two people 
      were found so far, but the number of casualties may be even bigger. 
      Twenty-two wounded persons had to be hospitalised in critical condition. 
      Sixty-one policemen, including forty U.N. constables, were injured in the 
      clashes. 
      Head of the Serbian Government’s Coordination Centre for 
      Kosovo Affairs Nebojsa Chovic, who had arrived in Kosovska-Metrovica, 
      called on the Serbian population to defend the northern, Serbian part of 
      the city from possible new Albanian raids in the same way as “the people 
      had defended themselves during the war in 1941”. 
      He described the actions of Albanian extremists in 
      Kosovo as outright “fascism”, noting that neither the U.N. Interim 
      Administration Mission in Kosovo, nor the KFOR “are able to restore law 
      and order in Kosovo”. Chovic stressed that the Wednesday event had 
      completely torpedoed the plans of the world community to form a 
      multinational community in Kosovo. 
      The situation is tense in the Serbian capital, too. The 
      Belgrade police and medics report that several dozens of people, including 
      thirty-three policemen and three reporters, were injured there during the 
      riots and spontaneous meetings in support of the Kosovo Serbs. 
      About ten thousand people have been staging a large 
      protest demonstration since Wednesday evening opposite the building of the 
      Serbian government, demanding an end to the escalation of tension in 
      Kosovo and vigorous steps to defend the Serbian minority in that 
      territory. Fire was set to the Belgrade mosque at midnight and several 
      hundred men tried to sack the building of the U.S. Embassy. Windowpanes of 
      the McDonald’s restaurant were smashed in the centre of the city. There 
      were also disorders last night in some other cities of Serbia – Nis, 
      Novi-Sad, Leskovac, Jagodin, and Cacak. 
      At night’s urgent meeting of the Supreme Defence Council 
      of Serbia and Montenegro, the top political and military leaders of the 
      two republics called on the world community to safeguard the Serbians and 
      Montenegrins and their property in Kosovo, to fully implement the U.N. 
      Council’s resolution 1244 on Kosovo. Security measures on the 
      administrative border of Serbia and Kosovo had to be toughened. 
  http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=562804&PageNum=0







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