ARMED KOSOVO ALBANIANS REPORTEDLY ENTER SERBIA, FIRE SHOTS AT FORMER SERB MAYOR
BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 12, 2006, Saturday

Text of report by Belgrade-based Radio B92 on 12 August

[Announcer] A group of armed [ethnic] Albanians carried out an armed attack on the territory of Kursumlija municipality's village of Tacevac on the administrative border between Serbia and Kosovo just as former Podujevo Mayor Milovan Tomcic was out in his field with his family. Ljiljana Danilovic reports from Kursumlija.

[Reporter] According to the testimony of former Podujevo Mayor Milovan Tomcic, who was with his family in the field close to the administrative border between Serbia and Kosovo, a large group of armed Albanians penetrated around three kilometres into the territory of Kursumlija municipality in Tacevac village and carried out an armed attack.

Tomcic said that there was a barrage of fire from automatic weapons which lasted for about ten minutes.

[Tomcic] I was barely 20 paces from the road when the shots were fired. Bullets started whistling above our heads. This was a real barrage of separate shots fired from several pieces of weapons and from a number of locations. At least five or six types of weapons were fired, but I managed to take cover.

[Tomcic's wife] When the barrage started getting fiercer, I told our daughter to get to the ground and start crawling. We managed to get close to a fence and then we climbed over it and got away.

[Reporter] The police went to the scene after the incident but an investigation was not carried out for security reasons. A spokeswoman for the police in Prokuplje, Jasmina Stamenkovic, confirmed that a group of armed Albanians had carried out an attack in the territory of Tacevac village.

[Stamenkovic] Members of Kfor [NATO-led Kosovo Force] were informed about the incident via our team for cooperation with Kfor so that they could undertake measures envisaged by the law.

[Reporter] Nobody was injured in this armed attack. We should say several dozens of armed attacks by Kosovo Albanians had been carried out in Kursumlija's Tacevac village over the past few years in which one local inhabitant was killed and several houses were torched.

Source: Radio B92, Belgrade, in Serbian 1500 gmt 12 Aug 06

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Copyright 2006 BBC Monitoring/BBC Source: Financial Times Information Limited

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