Serbia Blames Albanian ‘Terrorists’ in Fatal Hit

Serbia accused ethnic Albanian “terrorists” on Saturday of killing two of its police officers, and the U.N. refugee agency warned that the incident threatened to undermine fragile peace in southern Yugoslavia.

Two Serbian police officers were killed and two others wounded in an attack late Friday in the village of Muhovac in the Presevo Valley region of southern Serbia, a government official said. Serbia is the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

It was the first serious clash in the Presevo Valley, a remote hilly area east of U.N.-administrated Kosovo province, since a 16-month ethnic Albanian guerrilla insurgency ended in May.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, who rushed to the scene of the slayings, said Serbia would fight “terrorism” with all available means, adding that police would undertake house-to-house searches watched by international monitors.

“What happened last night . . . is not an outburst of nationalism or extremism. It is an obvious form of terrorism, and we will use all means available to deal with terrorists,” the official Tanjug news agency quoted Covic as saying.

An aide to Covic later confirmed a local media report that nine people were held for questioning and then released.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, strongly condemned the attack on the police post as a “grave criminal act” that threatens to undermine hard-won stability in the Presevo Valley, which has a large ethnic Albanian population.

“This is a cowardly act which does not serve the people of southern Serbia, many of whom have finally been able to return to their homes after nearly two years of displacement in Kosovo,” said Eric Morris, UNHCR special envoy in the Balkans.

The refugee agency added in a statement that it was concerned that the incident would dampen its efforts to return refugees to southern Serbia. About 5,000 ethnic Albanian villagers have returned to their homes since peace was restored.

Miodrag Miljkovic, a spokesman for a government-run press office in the regional center of Bujanovac, said police officers Dragan Brcarevic and Miodrag Mladenovic, both from the eastern Serbian town of Kladovo, died in the attack.

The Presevo Valley lies north of Macedonia, where government forces have clashed with a different ethnic Albanian guerrilla group.