NATO peacekeeping troops (KFOR) have arrested 13 ethnic-Albanian men as they tried to cross Kosovo's internal boundary with southern Serbia, where separatist rebels are dug in, KFOR sources said Sunday.
Ten of the men, aged 20-35, were arrested early Saturday as they tried to bypass a KFOR checkpoint on the demarcation line between Kosovo and Serbia just outside the Serbian town of Dobrosin, currently controlled by ethnic-Albanian rebels.
All ten, who were trying to enter Kosovo when they were intercepted, claimed that they had crossed illegally into Serbia the day before to visit relatives, said KFOR spokeswoman First Lieutentant Annemarie Daneker.
The arrests came after KFOR troops arrested three other ethnic Albanians late Friday for trying to cross the demarcation line between Kosovo and Serbia, against a new regulation banning men of combat age (18-35) from doing so.
Some 30 ethnic Albanian men have been arrested at the administrative border since fighting broke out inside a buffer zone in southern Serbia between the Liberation Army of Presevo Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) and Serbian police in November.
The buffer zone stretches three miles (five kilometres) into Serbia along the border with Kosovo. It was set up under an agreement last year between Belgrade and NATO, which makes the area off-limits to all security forces except lightly armed Serbian police.
But UCPMB rebels have taken advantage of the lack of security and the porous administrative border to set up bases inside the zone.
Three Serbian policemen were killed in the clashes before a tense ceasefire was reached between Belgrade and the UCPMB on November 27.
KFOR imposed the blanket ban on men of combat age crossing the demarcation line at the beginning of December, after Belgrade accused the international force of failing in its duties the maintain security in the area.
The UCPMB are fighting for the three Serbian towns, from which the group takes its name and which have majority ethnic-Albanian populations, to become part of Kosovo -- PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AFP)
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