muslims blow up churches in kosovo (11/17)

Two Serb Orthodox churches attacked in Kosovo

Sun Nov 17,12:58 PM ET

By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writer

DJURAKOVAC, Yugoslavia - Explosions ripped through two Serb Orthodox
churches in western Kosovo, marking the first such attacks in more than a
year.

Explosives shattered a village church in Ljubovo, some 60 kilometers (35
miles) west of Pristina, leaving only its stone gate standing. A separate
explosion in the nearby town of Djurakovac blew the church's wooden doors
off their hinges and littered the courtyard with broken glass.

No one was injured in the explosions late Saturday and early Sunday, U.N.
spokesman Andrea Angeli said. An investigation was under way.

Churches in Kosovo have often been targeted in the past, in part because
they are symbols of the years of Serb dominance under former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic. Most ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are Muslim,
though the southern Yugoslav province is largely secular.

Bishop Artemije, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, blamed
the United Nations and NATO for the attacks, charging that lax security
measures made it possible for attackers to act.

Though NATO-led peacekeepers had routinely guarded the churches, the
alliance recently removed many checkpoints near such buildings as part of an
alliance restructuring strategy. The troop rotations were intended to take
advantage of an overall decrease in ethnically motivated violence.

"All this shows that the international community is losing its sense of
purpose," Artemije was quoted as saying by the independent Beta news agency.
He added that the clear message from the ethnic Albanian majority is that
the Serbs have no place in the province.

Condemning the attack, the top U.N. official in Kosovo, Michael Steiner,
called it "an act of religious vandalism which does not fit the Kosovo of
2002." NATO's commander in Kosovo, Italian Lt. Gen. Fabio Mini, also
inspected the churches, while the ethnic Albanian prime minister, Bajram
Rexhepi, pledged to repair the damage.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999, when the
alliance bombed Serb troops to halt Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian
separatists.

Some 200,000 Serbs and other minorities have left the province since then,
fearing attacks leveled in revenge for Milosevic's crackdown, which killed
thousands of ethnic Albanians.