Unknown gunmen shot dead a Serb man as he walked home in the ethnically mixed southern Kosovo town of Vitina, the United Nations' regional police commander told AFP Thursday.
"A 55-year-old Serb male who had been drinking with friends was shot as he walked home and died as he was transfered to hospital," Gary Carrell said. The shooting took place at 7:30 pm (1830 GMT) Wednesday.
Initial, unconfirmed, reports suggested that a car pulled up alongside the man and its occupants called him over before shooting him three times with a pistol, he said.
"For the moment we have no suspects," he said.
Vitina, where Serbs live near ethnic Albanians, has been the scene of ethnic violence and fierce property disputes, he added, but police have yet to discover a motive for the latest attack.
On the same night in the nearby town of Gnjilane a grenade was thrown onto the balcony of a Serb-owned home but failed to explode, Carrell said.
"Recently we have had almost one attack of that kind every day, against both Albanian and Serb homes," the American commander said.
The southwestern region of Kosovo around Gnjilane did not see heavy fighting during the 1998-1999 conflict between Serb forces and ethnic Albanian rebels, but since the arrival of the province's NATO-led peacekeeping force in June last year it has seen ongoing ethnic violence.
The area is a prime recruiting ground for the armed ethnic Albanian groups fighting a guerrilla war across Kosovo's administrative frontier with Serbia proper, in the disputed Presevo valley area -- PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AFP)
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