First mass-grave sites found

KFOR troops have found first mass-grave sites in Kosovo yesterday. At the grave sites near Kacanik in the southeast of Kosovo, residents told Reuters the massacres had happened on April 8 and 9 in three hamlets nearby. They said that among 91 victims were men, women and children including a three-month-old baby girl who were either clubbed to death with rifle butts or killed by hand grenades. The wounded were finished off by pistol shots to the head, they added.

War crimes investigators are on their way to the site, and the discovery is being reported to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. If the sites at Kacanik are confirmed as graves, it would be the first discovery of killings on such a scale since peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo.

More evidence of atrocities were also reported in two other villages south of Pristina. In Ribari Vogel, locals told how Serb forces had slaughtered 26 people aged six to 97. The day after alleged massacre, the Serb forces moved to the village of Hallaq where locals said they massacred another 20 people after lining them up against a wall.

Dutch soldiers found today charred remains of around 20 ethnic Albanians in a Velika Krusa village near Prizren and expect to uncover more bodies in the vicinity. The peacekeepers said a KLA commander had told them another two houses on the road from Prizren to Orahovac contained the bodies of more murdered Kosovar Albanians. One house was said to contain the remains of 11 children, the other the corpses of around 30 old men. Sky television in London said the villagers were reported to have blamed the massacre on paramilitary forces commanded by Serbian warlord Arkan, who has been indicted for war crimes in Bosnia.

Source: Free Serbia

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