It was, as the Taoiseach said, just one of at least 500 such incidents that had taken place last spring and early summer in Kosovo. Yesterday afternoon Mr Ahern, his partner, Ms Celia Larkin, and his officials stood beside a small cemetery containing a group of freshly-filled graves and heard what happened there on April 19th last.
Mr Gerard Sexton, a garda on secondment to the International War Crimes Tribunal based in The Hague, pointed to the verge on the far side of the road where, he said, Serb tanks had lined up at 6 a.m. that day. They fired shells into the village, he explained, pointing to abandoned houses with their outside walls blackened by fire.
After the shelling Serb paramilitaries searched the houses looking for people. Many that they found, they burned alive, he said. They separated about 40 men aged from 18 to 85 from the rest, and brought them to a place he pointed out. Then they shot dead 12 of them as well as a 17-year old girl.
The aim of such ethnic cleansing was to frighten the population into fleeing. But now 95 per cent of those who fled are back, and among them are eyewitnesses to what happened that day. The War Crimes Tribunal is gathering evidence, taking witness statements, carrying out post-mortems and then reburying corpses they find.
The Irish transport company in Kosovo plays an important role here in allowing the wishes of local people to be respected. Villagers in cases such as these - and about 500 similar mass killings have been discovered and 200 investigated so far - want to wait until all exhumations and post-mortems are finished and then have one mass reburial. The Irish have what is in effect a refrigerated, mobile morgue which can hold up to 40 bodies and which they bring to such sites when needed.
The Taoiseach yesterday met leaders of all the main organisations involved in security and reconstruction in Kosovo. He met the head of Kfor, of the OSCE mission, of the United Nations force (UNMIK), the EU and the Council of Europe. Ireland has just assumed the presidency of the council, which is responsible for the development of civil law in the province.
Mr Ahern also met Mr Momcilo Trajkovic, a leader of the dwindling Serb community in Pristina who was shot and wounded last weekend. The Serb community in the capital has declined from 15,000 last March to fewer than 1,500 today.
Mr Ahern and his party also drove to Gracanica, regarded by Serbs as a cradle of their religion where a Serb Orthodox monastery has existed for over 600 years. There he met the head of the Serb Orthodox Church, while later in Pristina he met representatives of the Kosovar Albanian community.
Asked yesterday for his reaction to what he had seen, Mr Ahern remarked: "It's all only a few months ago. The events of the summer are still in everybody's minds. It is an honour for our country that our troops are involved in this." Later Mr Ahern informally addressed a group of Irish troops saying he was immensely proud of the work they were doing.