2 Killed, 39 Hurt as Grenades Hit Serb Market in Kosovo

Two people were killed and at least 39 wounded Tuesday during a midmorning grenade attack on a Serbian farmers market outside Kosovo’s provincial capital, NATO peacekeepers said.

The attack near Pristina--which turned the neighborhood market into a scene of bloody confusion--increased tension in an ethnically mixed area already convulsed by several days of violence and of Serbian demonstrations demanding stronger security measures.

NATO peacekeepers said they detained four men, including at least two ethnic Albanians, after the attack. Four of the survivors were gravely wounded, but NATO spokesman Maj. Rob Partridge said the injuries were not life-threatening.

Dusan Nitic, 47, a former driver for the Yugoslav court system, said he was selling cucumbers and peppers from his garden when the first grenade exploded about 15 feet from his stand and only a few hundred yards from NATO soldiers.

“We all lay down and, after two or three seconds, another one went off,” said Nitic, who suffered a minor cut on his throat. “Then I heard screams. After that [second] explosion, everyone scattered.”

Local Serbs responded by taking over the town’s main road, which is also the main artery connecting Pristina and Pec, Kosovo’s second-largest city.

Traffic was tied up for hours, at one point by a human chain of Serbs linking arms across the road, a British soldier said.

“Today is very tense,” said Miodrag Dokic, 57, an unemployed Serbian construction worker. “We are not safe.”

Tuesday evening, Serbs continued to maintain roadblocks with the tacit acceptance of North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers. British troops bearing machine guns and backed by tanks steered traffic around the barricaded zone via a railroad line and a dusty farm trail.

They also ordered the area off limits to reporters. As the evening wore on, Kosovo Polje was unnervingly quiet, with few people venturing out of their houses.

“It’s very dangerous out here,” an unidentified United Nations police officer said.

In a statement released at U.N. headquarters in New York, the world body’s chief administrator in Kosovo strongly condemned the grenade attack.

“This outrageous act against innocent civilians puts in danger all efforts at democracy in Kosovo,” said Bernard Kouchner. “I deplore this crime, which occurred in an area where our efforts at retaining a multiethnic society in Kosovo have been so intensely focused.”

The grenade attack came just hours before NATO officials confirmed reports that first surfaced two weeks ago that French police have arrested at least four Serbs in connection with an April massacre of ethnic Albanian men.

French forensic specialists over the past several days have exhumed 28 bodies from graves in the village of Vidomiric, about two miles west of the northern Kosovo city of Kosovska Mitrovica.

Nine of the victims have been identified as being from a group of ethnic Albanians who disappeared after a Serbian paramilitary raid on Kosovska Mitrovica’s Popovic Street. Seven other bodies have been tentatively identified, said Col. Claude Vicaire, commander of the French police assigned to the region around the bitterly divided city.

Vicaire said the grave site was discovered after French investigators interviewed an unidentified witness living somewhere in Europe. He declined to discuss the witness.

In Kosovo Polje, protests erupted Sunday after Irish Guard troops, acting on a tip, raided an apartment being used by local Serbs as a weapons cache. It was the second such raid in a week. Serbs in the town blocked the main road for a time but removed the barricades after NATO peacekeepers promised to step up security in the area.

Since then, the blood has flowed.

About 10 p.m. Sunday, two elderly Serbs were stabbed near the apartments in which the weapons were found.

On Monday, about 100 Serbs were back in the streets of Kosovo Polje to protest after hearing reports that a Serb had been shot in the stomach in another village. An ethnic Albanian man was dragged from his car and severely beaten, NATO officials said.

In addition, a Serbian restaurant was set on fire Monday.

“We don’t have security here,” said Nitic, the vegetable seller. “[NATO peacekeepers] have failed. We don’t trust them anymore. We are panicking.”

*

Times staff writer John J. Goldman at the United Nations contributed to this report.