Gunmen Attack Patrol in Kosovo

Gunmen fired on a joint American-Russian patrol Sunday as it tried to seal the boundary between Kosovo and part of southern Serbia where ethnic Albanian rebels have been challenging Yugoslav forces, the U.S. Army said.

There were no casualties in the attack, the first reported against NATO-led peacekeepers since ethnic Albanian rebels escalated cross-border raids in November. The joint patrol returned fire, but it was unclear whether the attackers, whose identity was unknown, suffered casualties, U.S. Army spokeswoman Capt. Alayne Cramer said in a statement.

On Saturday, Serbs angry over a motorist’s arrest set fire to a police station in northwestern Kosovo and briefly took seven Belgian soldiers hostage. Two Serbs died in the melee.

The U.S. statement said the shooting attack occurred as the patrol was trying to seal the boundary near the Kosovo village of Gornje Karacevo. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.

A 3-mile-wide buffer zone along the Yugoslav side of the boundary was established in June 1999. It was set up to protect peacekeepers who took over Kosovo after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 78-day air war against Yugoslavia.