US marines killed two people and surrounded several others in a building in south-eastern Kosovo yesterday after the Marines were fired on, the general in charge of American troops in the area said.
None of the Marines was injured in the incident, in the village of Zegra south of Gnjilane, according to US Brigadier General John Craddock.
French troops arrested three Serb civilians after a gun battle which began when peacekeepers rushed to help ethnic Albanians threatened by Serbs in a divided Kosovan town.
The latest evidence of Kosovo's killing fields emerged when French troops discovered a grave with as many as 180 bodies near Mitrovica.
Four EU foreign ministers got their first look at post-war Kosovo. The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, was shown charred, skeletal bodies in a village where 105 men and boys were apparently massacred.
"This is where you see the results of Milosevic's orders and this is why he must be brought to justice," he said. "If I had any doubts about the justice of the campaign to liberate Kosovo from this terror, they have been banished."
As he spoke, President Slobodan Milosevic's assets in Switzerland were frozen by the Berne government at the request of the UN war crimes tribunal.
Mitrovica's effective division into hostile Serb and Albanian-populated neighbourhoods has presented French troops with the task of restoring a safe environment for civilian life.
Northern Kosovo has a significant, dug-in Serb population, unlike the east, south and west - now controlled by British, US, Italian and German Kfor troops - which are more heavily ethnic Albanian with few Serbs left.
A French army spokesman said Serbs opened fire early yesterday at a French patrol which had gone to assist ethnic Albanians being evicted from their homes in central Mitrovica, where Serbs still form a majority.
That shooting broke out was no surprise, as Kosovo remains swamped with weapons even after the military withdrawal.
A gun battle between the French and Serbs ensued, followed by the arrest of three Serb civilians, the French officer said.
"Our priority was to protect human lives," the French Defence Minister, Mr Alain Richard, said as he arrived in Mitrovica to visit the French Kfor headquarters.
He said preventing killings and looting had been difficult so far because only 2,000 French soldiers had reached a sector stretching 60 km by 50.
On Tuesday, French troops found the bodies of two Serb civilians, each with a bullet in the head. Two others had been killed and one wounded on a road south of Mitrovica.
The NATO Supreme Commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, said on Tuesday that Kfor's planned 55,000 troop strength might not be enough, and he called for contributing states to speed up deployments in the face of a serious security vacuum in Kosovo.
Mr Cook and the foreign ministers of Italy, Germany and France were in Kosovo to inspect evidence of war crimes and have talks on reconstructing the devastated province of Yugoslavia.
In the western village of Velika Krusa, Mr Cook wore a white protective suit and mask as he toured a farmyard where British pathologists have found the charred remains of around 40 people. He said he felt "rising indignation against the people who had ordered these atrocities".
Since being deployed in northern Kosovo, French soldiers acting on information from local residents have found about 20 possible mass grave sites.
The French Foreign Ministry said a 10-member team of forensic and police experts would leave today for Kosovo to investigate war crimes.
UN tribunal investigators are also fanning through Kosovo.
In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was seeking access to a "considerable number" of Kosovo Albanian political prisoners taken out of the province by withdrawing Serb forces.
In Belgrade yesterday, an independent opinion pollster said Mr Milosevic's popularity had declined to 15 per cent from about 40 per cent but he was still the most popular politician in Serbia due to the lack of a credible democratic alternative.
In Moscow, the Russian Defence Minister, Mr Igor Sergeyev, said that Russia would send peacekeepers to Kosovo on Monday. Russia's contingent is expected to total 3,600 eventually and will spread through three of the five NATO-run sectors.
