PRISTINA (AP) – An explosion shook an elementary school in the breakaway province of Kosovo in southern Serbia early yesterday, minutes after the classroom was cleared of children, an official said. No one was reported injured in the blast, which police believe was caused by a hand grenade in the heating stove. The Kosovo Serb school, in the village of Ropotovo, in eastern Kosovo, was damaged, police said. Three Kosovo Serb men were being questioned about the explosion, police spokesman Veton Elshani said, but no arrests had been made. “We believe the hand grenade exploded as the stove was heated in the morning hours,” Elshani said. Tensions have been running high between minority Serbs and majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo as the province seeks to sever all ties with Serbia and become an independent state, an option Belgrade opposes.

BOSTON (AP) – A Bosnian immigrant was sentenced to more than five years in prison on Monday for concealing his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre so he could get into the United States. The sentence of five years and three months was far below the 11 years and three months that prosecutors sought for Marko Boskic, 41, who was convicted of lying about his military record on his immigration application. Boskic’s attorney had recommended a sentence of four to 10 months, and said the government was trying to punish Boskic for participating in the Srebrenica killings, a crime he is not charged with and one he claims he committed only after he was threatened with death himself.

More than 60 bodies of unidentified victims of the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s were to be exhumed yesterday from two Belgrade graveyards, a government commission for missing persons said. The 63 bodies had floated down the Danube and Sava rivers from the direction of Croatia and Bosnia, the scenes of heavy clashes during the 1991-95 wars, the commission said. The unidentified victims are believed to be Bosnians, Croats or Serbs who fought during the ethnic strife that claimed more than 200,000 lives and left thousands missing. (AP)

Serbian President Boris Tadic underwent a successful gall bladder operation late on Monday in a hospital in the capital Belgrade, his office said. “The surgery ended shortly before 8 p.m.,” the state-run Tanjug news agency reported, adding that Tadic was “feeling well.” Tadic, 47, is to remain in Belgrade’s military hospital for several days. (AFP)