A Kosovo police officer stands near the damaged UN police vehicle where a Nigerian UN police officer was killed in a car bomb explosion in the western town of Prizren, yesterday. The vehicle exploded as he was driving to work in Kosovo.

PRISTINA (AFP) - A Nigerian police officer working with the UN mission in Kosovo was killed yesterday when his car exploded in the southern town of Prizren, police said.

UN police spokesman Ken Sticeu refused to speculate on the cause of the blast, which killed the officer as he was driving to work.

“The investigation of the cause of the explosion is not finished,” he said.

UN mission chief Soren Jessen-Petersen said he was “shocked with this tragic incident” and expressed his condolences to the family of the police officer, whose name has not been released. The explosion took place near the central bus station and the biggest shopping center in Prizren.

“A few witnesses said the blast was so huge that some parts of the officer’s body were spread widely in different directions,” said local journalist Refki Alia, who went to the scene shortly after the explosion.

Some 3,500 foreign police serve in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia that has been under UN administration since 1999 after a war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian separatists.