KLA fighters are accused of vandalizing Devic monastery and terrorizing the staff
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June 17, 1999
Web posted at: 2:35 p.m. EDT (1835 GMT)

In this story: Yugoslav troop withdrawal ahead of schedule Possible mass grave revealed near Pec RELATED STORIES, SITES

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- KFOR peacekeepers in Kosovo found themselves trying to deter reprisals against Serbs Thursday, as ethnic Albanian rebels were accused of desecrating a Serbian Orthodox monastery and assaulting a nun.

Despite the incidents reported by French troops, the peacekeepers sought to reassure nervous Serbs they could protect them. The monastery is in Srbica, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Pristina.

KFOR spokesmen said Thursday the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from the Serbian province was proceeding ahead of schedule. But the shrine's desecration could hurt KFOR's attempt to prevent a second flood of refugees from Kosovo -- this time, from Serb neighborhoods.

French peacekeepers put the Devic monastery under guard after they said Kosovo Liberation Army fighters terrorized a priest and several nuns for four days, from Sunday to Wednesday.

The KFOR troops said KLA rebels vandalized centuries-old murals and paintings in the chapel and stole two cars and all the monastery's food.

In addition, a French soldier said, the KLA stripped the clothes from a young nun and took her into a back room. The soldier said she was hysterical and appeared to be traumatized when she was found.

When asked if the woman had been raped, the French soldier responded to CNN, "What do you think?"

The 15th-century monastery is one of the shrines from which the Serbian nation draws its cultural identity. Part of the agreement that ended NATO's 11-week bombing campaign provides for a handful of Yugoslav troops to return to the province later to protect sites like Devic.

Yugoslav troop withdrawal ahead of schedule

About 15,000 troops from NATO countries have gone into Kosovo since the end of fighting a week ago, said Lt. Col. Robin Clifford, KFOR's spokesman in Pristina. At the same time, 35,000 Yugoslav army and Serb special police troops have left.

That puts them ahead of the schedule set by the cease-fire agreement, which demands that all Yugoslav troops leave Kosovo by midnight Sunday.

Fearing reprisals from the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians driven out during NATO's air war against Yugoslavia, about 50,000 Serbs already have fled the province as their former neighbors return.

KFOR commander Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson and Serbian Orthodox leader Patriarch Pavle have urged them to stay, and Clifford said the Serb exodus had slowed.

KFOR will protect "all the ordinary, decent citizens of Kosovo, regardless of their ethnic background or religious persuasion," Clifford said.

"I have also spoken to those who say they are perfectly content to say here, certainly those here in Pristina, as long as KFOR troops are here to protect them," he said.

KFOR troops have had several encounters with the KLA, including one Wednesday in which U.S. Marines disarmed a group of 16 guerrillas. The newest reports of KLA anti-Serb activities came as reports surfaced of a possible agreement among rebel leaders to lay down their arms.

Clifford said he could not comment on any possible agreement with the KLA, but said, "We view any actions by the KLA -- or any other armed bands of paramilitaries or armed groups that cause friction or raise tensions -- as being entirely unacceptable."

Possible mass grave revealed near Pec

Pavle planned to stay in Pec, in southern Kosovo, in an effort to reassure Serbs and convince them to remain in the region Serbs consider the cradle of their society. But Pec was largely a ghost town Thursday, with only about 200 of its prewar population of 90,000 remaining.

During the war, NATO accused Serb-led troops of carrying out a campaign of terror against ethnic Albanian civilians, and Kosovo Albanians are now bringing numerous graves to the attention of NATO troops and news organizations.

In a village near Pec, residents showed CNN a site where they said 35 people were killed by Serb forces.

The villagers said that on May 14, Yugoslav troops herded the men into four houses and set them on fire. Three men lived to tell the story, and Italian troops secured the grave sites for international investigators.

British officials said as many as 10,000 ethnic Albanians may have been killed in Kosovo, their remains buried at more than 100 sites. Clifford acknowledged the discoveries, but stopped short of attributing them entirely to massacres.

"Let's not forget there has been a war here, and people die in wars and people are buried in wars," he said.

In addition to grave sites, British troops participating in the KFOR peacekeeping mission have discovered what Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon called a torture center in the cellar of Serbia's special police headquarters in Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital.

And as Yugoslav troops leave Kosovo, they are burning houses and occasionally shooting people as they go, said Adm. Ian Garnett, Britain's chief of joint operations.

In the last days of the war, a U.N. tribunal charged Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four top officials with war crimes in connection with the violence in Kosovo.

Correspondents Richard Blystone, Mike Boettcher and Jim Clancy contributed to this report.

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