Grenade Attack Spurs Serb Melee in Kosovo; 12 Injured

Serbs angry over a grenade attack swarmed around a British general Tuesday, prompting his bodyguards to fire into the crowd.

The violence in this Kosovo town just south of the provincial capital, Pristina, escalated quickly. At midmorning, an attacker hurled a grenade in the market in the center of town, witnesses and NATO-led peacekeepers said.

Furious that North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops did not prevent the attack, a crowd gathered and began to stone peacekeepers. The mob also attacked motorists and set vehicles on fire.

Brig. Richard Shirreff, the commander of the British sector, rushed to the scene to calm the crowd, which closed around him and took one bodyguard’s weapon.

Others in his security detail fired shots into the air and one into the crowd, injuring one person, NATO officials said.

Zorica Nedeljkovic, the head of the medical center in Gracanica, told the Beta news agency that 12 Serbs were injured--eight in the grenade attack and four in the subsequent clash with peacekeepers.

The melee comes just days before the anniversary of the arrival of peacekeepers, who took over Kosovo--a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic--after NATO’s 78-day air war to end Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s repression of ethnic Albanians.