6 Kosovo Separatists Reportedly Held in Attack

Ethnic Albanians fired on a Serbian police patrol Sunday in central Kosovo, Serbian sources said. The shooting added to the upsurge in violence threatening the province’s fragile cease-fire.

The Serbian Media Center said ethnic Albanian separatists attacked along the province’s main east-west road about 25 miles west of Pristina, the provincial capital. Police fired back, wounding two of the attackers. Those and four others were captured, the center said.

Tensions already were running high Sunday in the province. The rebel Kosovo Liberation Army buried 33 guerrillas killed by Yugoslav border guards, and hundreds of Serbs protested the killing of a local official.

Meanwhile, an ally of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic denounced the U.S. for allegedly favoring the separatists in Kosovo, a province in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia where ethnic Albanians make up 90% of the population.

Milosevic aide Zivorad Igic was quoted Sunday by the government’s Tanjug news agency as criticizing Washington’s alleged “supportive” stand toward the ethnic Albanian “terrorists.”

In Kosovo, thousands of mourners for the 33 KLA members gathered in rebel-held territory 20 miles west of Pristina for the funeral.

The dead were among 36 ethnic Albanians killed in a border clash last week. The bodies of all but three were handed over to the rebels after mediation by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

At the same time, about 300 Serbs angry over the recent death of their mayor gathered in subfreezing temperatures in the town of Kosovo Polje, just outside Pristina, to demand state protection.

The latest violence has dimmed hopes that diplomacy can head off a return to full-scale war in Kosovo. More than 1,000 people have been killed and about 300,000 have been forced from their homes since fighting escalated in late February.

International officials tried Saturday to bring the KLA and the followers of Ibrahim Rugova, a moderate ethnic Albanian, to talks with Serbian officials. Rugova has said he will accept broad autonomy within Serbia, but the KLA is determined to fight for independence.