5 Ethnic Albanians Arrested in Killings

NATO peacekeepers have arrested five ethnic Albanians in connection with the abduction and killing of a Serbian man, and detained two others suspected in the slaying of an elderly Serbian woman.

Maj. Jan Joosten said some ethnic Albanians took a Serbian couple hostage in the provincial capital, Pristina, on Monday night. The captors then killed the husband, released his wife and fled.

Five suspects were arrested by Italian peacekeepers in the city of Pec, 50 miles west of Pristina, on Tuesday, he said. They will be turned over to military police with the British forces who are in charge of the Pristina area.

Two ethnic Albanians were arrested in Pristina in connection with the killing of the elderly Serbian woman Monday, he said.

In other incidents, French peacekeepers arrested 15 Serbian men in Kosovska Mitrovica when they tried to block the return of ethnic Albanians to their homes in the northern Serb-dominated part of the town. An assault rifle and grenade were seized from the Serbs, peacekeepers said.

Meanwhile, an ethnic Albanian woman was found shot in the chest in southeast Kosovo on Monday night, and she was evacuated by Russian peacekeepers to medical facilities at the U.S. Army’s Camp Bondsteel.