PRISTINA (AFP) – Three people were injured in a blast overnight in northern Kosovo, populated mostly by the Serb minority, Kosovo police said Sunday. “A blast occurred around 2.15 a.m. (0015 GMT) in the center of Leposavic,” a Serb-populated town, police spokesman Besim Hoti told AFP. Hoti said an “explosive device, apparently a hand grenade, was thrown from a moving vehicle,” adding that an investigation was under way. The blast took place just hours after the start of the celebration of Orthodox Easter. The three injured were taken to hospital in nearby Kosovska Mitrovica. A special team of investigators from the United Nations arrived in Pristina this weekend to examine the one of the worst clashes, on March 17, in which a Ukrainian police officer was killed and 150 other people injured. Also Saturday, Kosovo police seized three kilos of plastic explosives, several AK-47 automatic rifles and a large amount of ammunition in a house in Kosovska Mitrovica, Hoti said. Three young Serbs, aged from 17 to 21, were arrested, he added.

TIRANA (AFP) – Albania’s prosecutor general has asked the parliament to lift immunity for a former defense minister linked to a deadly ammunitions explosion which killed 26, a statement Saturday said. Fatmir Mediu resigned two days after the March 15 blast, which saw a former Soviet ordnance factory destroyed in a series of blasts that also wrecked some 5,500 nearby houses, and caused two billion leks (26 million dollars, 16.6 million euros) damage. Now prosecutor Ina Rama wants his immunity from prosecution lifted, accusing him of abusing his post. In a request sent from the prosecutor’s office to the parliament in Tirana, Rama cites the violation of the laws and procedures of security and ammunition storage, the dismantling process and further management failings which “caused the spark of the fire followed by the massive explosions.” The prosecutor also called the employment of children in the factory “a flagrant violation.”

Police stopped a car carrying weapons and ammunition from Kosovo toward the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) yesterday and arrested four Kosovo Albanians, authorities said. The weapons, which were given to NATO-led peacekeepers responsible for securing Kosovo’s borders, apparently were intended for extremists in neighboring FYROM, police said. The cargo contained high-caliber weapons and ammunition, including rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and anti-aircraft machine guns, police said. (AP)

Two former Serb security chiefs are going on trial in The Hague on charges of training, arming and directing paramilitary units that killed and persecuted non-Serbs during the Balkan wars. The trial is beginning following a ruling by judges at the UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal that one defendant could watch proceedings via video from his cell. Jovica Stanisic is suffering from severe depression and kidney stones, and doctors warned he was too ill to attend his trial. The other defendant, Franko Simatovic, was in court for the trial’s opening. (AP)