Kosovo Eruption

An explosion shattered the early morning calm Wednesday in the predominantly Serb part of the divided Kosovo city of Kosovska Mitrovica, a day after at least 40 people were injured in a violent clash.

It was not immediately clear what caused the blast on the north side of the city, which has been plagued by violence for weeks.

NATO peacekeepers had imposed an early curfew Tuesday, hoping to ease tensions inflamed after a street brawl led to gunshots and grenade blasts that injured 16 French peacekeepers and 24 civilians.

Attackers shot into a crowd during a fight between an ethnic Albanian and a Serb on Tuesday, touching off a clash that further underlined NATO's failure to ease ethnic passions in the city.

U.N. officials halted attempts to register Serbs wanting to return to their homes on the southern, ethnic Albanian side of town, but managed to slip 13 ethnic Albanians back into the north, sending them home to a high-rise apartment complex that was the site of repatriations last week.

"The events of yesterday made our operation confused," said Lt. Matthieu Mabin, a spokesman for French peacekeepers.

"We need time. We need to be diplomatic."

The violence in Kosovska Mitrovica, located 20 miles northwest of Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina, underlines the difficulties NATO faces in attempting to return the town to its prewar, multiethnic status.

Tuesday's fight broke out on the Serb-controlled north side when an ethnic Albanian identified as Luan Miftari attacked an unidentified Serb man with a crowbar, witnesses said.

Several Serbs rushed to help the injured man, while others went after Miftari. In the crush, an ethnic Albanian opened fire from the backyard of a nearby house, seriously wounding one Serb.

"That created panic," Mabin said. He arrived at the scene on foot, backed by armored vehicles.

The French headed down a narrow side street, as grenade blasts rang out, injuring several peacekeepers.

Medics scrambled to stabilize one soldier's leg wound, as another lay on the ground moaning. Those who were not hurt in the blast dragged injured comrades toward waiting ambulances.

"Hand grenades were thrown, we don't know from whom or from where ... but it created very many injured, especially French soldiers," Mabin said.

Twenty Serbs, 16 French peacekeepers and four ethnic Albanians were hurt in the fighting, said Lt. Col. Patrick Chanliau, another spokesman for the French peacekeepers. A seventeenth peacekeeper was injured in a separate incident.

Four ethnic Albanians have been arrested, Chanliau said.

After the grenade blasts, French peacekeepers began door-to-door searches in the Bosnjacka Mahala neighborhood where the fighting occurred. They later moved up the city's curfew by two hours to 8 p.m., and promised to take any measures necessary to make the region secure.

Gen. Wesley Clark, NATOs supreme commander in Europe, visited NATO peacekeepers on the southern side of Kosovska Mitrovica on Tuesday, NATO said. The independent Beta news agency said Clark met with local Serb leader Oliver Ivanovic.

Kosovo is a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. NATO-led peacekeepers moved into Kosovo last June, after a 78-day bombing campaign that ended a yearlong Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians there.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed concern Tuesday that the U.N. administration in Kosovo is operating in "limbo" because the province's political future has not been clearly defined.

The "very ambiguous situation" created by the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the bombing campaign has left ethnic Albanians and Serbs with different understandings about the future, he said.

U.N. resolutions call for "substantial autonomy" for Kosovo.

"Substantial autonomy has not been defined in any way," Annan said.