New Alert In Kosovo

NATO peacekeepers increased patrols in a Kosovo village Saturday, a day after nine Serb children were injured in a grenade attack.

The attack came just hours after an explosion in the province's capital wounded one woman and damaged several political offices.

Flight Lt. Tim Serrell-Cooke, a spokesman for British peacekeepers, said the grenades were hurled by three occupants of a vehicle who ignored warning shots fired in the air by a U.N. policeman as they sped away.

The grenades were tossed into a basketball court in the village of Crkvena Vodica, about 7 miles northwest of Pristina, the provincial capital. Nine children were treated for minor injuries and released from a local hospital.

Two men were questioned and released, told to report back Saturday for further interrogation, Serrell-Cooke said. Angry and tense villagers stoned a car carrying ethnic Albanians early Saturday, but no injuries were reported.

NATO bombings forced an end to the government crackdown on Kosovo Albanians last year, but violence continues to mar chances of ethnic reconciliation.

Most of the 200,000 Serbs who lived in Kosovo have fled, after a rash of revenge attacks by the majority ethnic Albanians.

Some parents of the injured children expressed anger Saturday.

"If some of us are guilty, let them hit on us, not on our kids," said one woman, whose 8-year-old girl was among the injured. Like others, she would not give her name for fear of further attack.

One man blamed "Albanian terrorists" for the incident. He said the children hurt were aged 5 to 15.

Another blast, attributed to political tensions ahead of local elections in October, damaged a building housing the offices of the Democratic League of Kosovo in the central town of Malisevo.

Nobody was hurt in the explosion late Friday. U.N. spokeswoman Claire Trevena said a dark colored van was seen leaving the blast site after the explosion, but U.N. police had no suspects in the incident.

The party is led by pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, the symbol of Kosovo Albanian resistance to Serb dominance in the decade before tensions exploded into violence in 1998.

In Pristina on Friday, an explosion went off behind a building run by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, damaging offices of Serb, ethnic Albanian and other political parties housed there.

One woman suffered cuts and bruises and several other people were in shock, Serrell-Cooke said. NATO officials said the explosion appeared to have been caused by a bomb.

The OSCE is in charge of democracy-building in the province.

Kosovo, a southern Yugoslav province, has been run by the United Nations since the end of the 78-day NATO bombing campaign.

By FISNIK ABRASHI