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Seven Serbs Dead, 35 Injured in Bomb Attack in Northern Kosovo
At least seven people died and 35 were wounded in a bomb attack Friday against a convoy of buses carrying Serbs in northern Kosovo, the NATO-led Kosovo peace force said.
Ten of the wounded were "very serious cases," said Major Tim Pearce of the British army, which heads the KFOR peacekeeping force in the northeastern zone.
Five buses were travelling in a KFOR-escorted convoy near the town of Podujevo close to Kosovo's boundary with the rest of Serbia when the lead coach was hit and "totally destroyed" by a remote-controlled bomb, Pearce said.
He said there were no casualties among the convoy's Swedish peacekeeping troops, who always travel in armored vehicles.
All the victims were evacuated to hospitals in Kosovo, many of them in KFOR helicopters.
The attack happened at around 11:15 am (1015 GMT), six kilometers (four miles) north of Podujevo, Pearce said.
He added that several witnesses at the scene had been "apprehended" and that an investigation was underway.
The convoy was taking the Serbs from KFOR-guarded enclaves in the UN-run province to southern Serbia when the attack happened, officials said.
KFOR regularly escorts Serbs from their isolated enclaves in Kosovo, where they have grouped for protection from revenge attacks and from ethnic Albanian extremists, to Serbia, where many have families and where they can stock up on provisions.
On Tuesday one Serb was killed and three others injured when their convoy, escorted from southern Serbia by KFOR Ukrainian troops, was shot at near the southern Kosovo enclave of Strpce.
The convoys have to take a long route via the northeastern Kosovo crossing point of Merdare, near Podujevo, since ethnic Albanian rebels have taken control of a buffer zone on Kosovo's boundary with southern Kosovo.
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