U.S. Forces Raid Albanian Sites in Kosovo

U.S. troops in Kosovo on Wednesday raided command posts, staging areas and arms caches of ethnic Albanian militias in what U.S. and NATO officials described as the first military action against former allies who now threaten the success of the Kosovo peacekeeping mission.

American officials described the operation as a preemptive strike to prevent Kosovo Albanian fighters from smuggling weapons and launching cross-border attacks in Serbia from the U.S.-patrolled sector of southeastern Kosovo. Such attacks have threatened to provoke a new confrontation between U.S. peacekeepers and Serbian forces under Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.

“We are committed to providing the Kosovo Albanians with a safe and secure environment, but we are not providing them with strategic cover,” said a senior North Atlantic Treaty Organization official.

The operation came just one day after a Pentagon official warned that U.S. troops might have to confront their former allies in Kosovo this spring. Although U.S. troops exchanged fire with Albanian militants at one location, no casualties were reported on either side.

Also Wednesday, NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo seized control of a key bridge and clashed with angry Serbs in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica. Two people lost limbs to stun grenades during the confrontation.

Serbs responded with a call for a campaign of civil disobedience against the embattled U.N. and NATO administration in Kosovo.

Crowds of angry Serbs surged into a “security zone” at the bridgehead.

At least 15 Serbs and an undetermined number of peacekeepers and journalists were injured. Nine of the injured Serbs were hospitalized, said Dr. Radomir Jankovic, chief surgeon at the Serb-controlled hospital.

A mother of three and a diabetic man each had a foot amputated because of injuries suffered when stun grenades fired by French peacekeepers exploded near them, Jankovic said.

Serbian leaders threatened to break off all cooperation with peacekeepers in retaliation for the eviction of Serbian residents and “bridge guards” from the security zone in the Little Bosnia neighborhood.