British NATO peacekeepers opened fire yesterday morning on a crowd of hundreds of rioting Serbs who were threatening their commander in the Kosovan Serb enclave of Gracanica, a British army spokesman has said.
Initial reports said the bodyguards of British Brig Richard Sherriff wounded three Serb rioters, although the toll was later changed to one.
Six people were hurt, two of them seriously, when a grenade was thrown earlier in the day from a car in the centre of the enclave, which is 10 km south of Pristina. According to a spokesman for the Serb National Council, a further six Serbs and two ethnic Albanians were wounded in the riots.
"There was no question, my life was in danger, and our lives were very much threatened," said Brig Shirreff, commanding officer of 7th Armoured Brigade, after the incident, which occurred about 11 a.m. yesterday.
The senior officer of Britain's peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo was trying to placate an angry Serb crowd, estimated at 500 strong, which had gathered in the scorching sunshine to protest after a hand grenade was thrown from an Albanian car.
The Serb crowd surrounded the brigadier. His driver, signaller and bodyguard, 9 mm Browning pistols drawn, protected him as he tried to persuade the crowd to disperse. The men were shot at point-blank range. "Our guys did a first-rate job," said Brig Shirreff. "A weapon was taken and turned on us. We opened fire within our Rules of Engagement."
"Fifteen shots were fired at the Serbs by the brigadier's close-protection team," said a British NATO spokesman, Capt Jo Butterfill. Two Albanian lorries, two minibuses and two cars passing through Gracanica were torched by the Serb crowd following the grenade blast.
The occupants of the vehicles took refuge in a Serb monastery and were later allowed to leave.
British troops from the Royal Fusiliers deployed in support of Swedish peacekeepers to Gracanica, whose monastery is the spiritual home of Kosovo's remaining 105,000 Serbs.
Eight Serbs have been killed by Albanians in Kosovo in the last week in an upsurge of ethnic violence, following widely-spread false rumours that NATO's and the UN's mandate expires on June 9th, and that Serb forces would be allowed to return.
Serb officials from Kosovo's Serb National Council on Sunday suspended their participation as observers in the UN-sponsored multi-ethnic Interim Administrative Council, the province's ruling body, in protest at the violence.
In the district court of the northern Kosovan town of Mitrovica, the trials of two Serb men, indicted for genocide, were adjourned until June 12th.
Mr Miroslav Vukovic and Mr Bozhur Bishevac, who is being tried in his absence, are the first offenders in Kosovo to be tried for genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes under a new UN-sponsored legal system, involving international, Serb and Albanian judges, which has taken more than a year to set up.
After hours of legal wrangling yesterday Judge Mahmut Halimi, sitting with alongside a Swedish judge, adjourned the hearing to see if the small municipal court in Serb-dominated northern Mitrovica could house simultaneous translators, as demanded by defence lawyers.