Outside the Beltway

Three Blasts Rock Kosovo Capital, Hit U.N. Headquarters

James Joyner · Friday, July 8, 2005 · 1 comment

Blasts Rock Kosovo Capital, Hit U.N. HQ (AP)

At least three blasts rocked the center of Kosovo’s capital on Saturday, and one targeted the U.N. mission headquarters. An Associated Press reporter saw at least three U.N. vehicles set ablaze in the parking lot of the U.N. mission headquarters in Pristina. There were no immediate reports of any injuries after at least three near-simultaneous blasts, said Hua Jiang, chief U.N. spokeswoman.

The second blast detonated near the building of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE, which is a block away from the U.N. compound. The third blast went off near the Kosovo government building which also houses the province’s parliament and damaged it slightly, said Jiang. She did not say what caused the blasts.

Police sealed off the areas after the explosions.

Kosovo has been administered by the U.N. mission and patrolled by NATO-led peacekeepers since 1999 after the alliance’s bombing of Serb forces waging a crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians.
The province remains disputed between its ethnic Albanian majority who want it to become independent, and Serbs demanding it remain part of Serbia-Montenegro, the union that replaced former Yugoslavia.

Lovely. So far, no coverage of this in the major papers. One presumes this is a terrorist operation, of course. One presumes, too, that the timing of this the day after the London blasts was coincidental. I can’t imagine al Qaeda’s motivation for striking in Kosovo and this would be some very quick planning if it’s a piggyback operation by another group.