At least 15 people died violently in Kosovo on Thursday and yesterday, underlining the perils which remained as record numbers of ethnic Albanians continued to return home.
Three of the dead were Serb academics whose corpses were found at Pristina University. They had been murdered, according to NATO officers in the Kfor peacekeeping force.
Some 50,000 exiles flooded back into the province on Thursday alone, bringing to more than 300,000 the number who have returned home since NATO troops began their peacekeeping role, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva said yesterday.
Meanwhile, statements by Russian government and military officials showed the continuing divergences between Moscow and NATO despite last week's agreement for Russian troops to operate alongside NATO soldiers in Kfor.
The spontaneous flood of exiles since the first Kfor contingents entered Kosovo on June 12th is much higher than the UNHCR expected. It had originally predicted that between 400,000 and 500,000 would return by the end of September.
"All three UNHCR border monitoring posts in Albania, Macedonia and [the Yugoslav Republic of] Montenegro registered record numbers," a UNHCR spokesman, Mr Kris Janowski, said in Geneva.
One positive sign yesterday was the release by the Yugoslav authorities of 166 ethnic Albanian prisoners taken to Serbia during the retreat of Serb forces from Kosovo. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was transporting the men, held in two prisons near Nis, south-east of Belgrade, back to Kosovo.
"The released detainees will have the opportunity to telephone their families and will be given food and shelter for the night in Pristina before being taken by the ICRC to their home districts in Kosovo," it said.
While many ethnic Albanians clearly believe it is safe to go home, another figure released yesterday highlighted the dangers which persist.
Over 24 hours "we had 14 murders in the British sector in Kosovo. This is the largest number of murders we have had so far," said Lieut Col Robin Hodges, of the British Kfor contingent whose sector includes Pristina. The 14 victims, all killed in Pristina, included the three Serb academics.
Lieut Col Hodges said British Kfor troops reported that the situation in the zone they controlled "was mostly quiet except in Pristina", where looting and other incidents were still rife.
The 15th death was that of an Italian soldier killed when a fellow soldier's rifle accidentally went off late on Thursday near the town of Pec.
The differences between Russia and NATO were highlighted yesterday by comments by a senior Russian general that Moscow's troops serving with Kfor would not arrest war crime suspects accused of atrocities in Kosovo.
Gen Leonid Ivashov, a leading critic of NATO, told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper: "Russia has its own point of view on the issue and our soldiers would not carry out a mission connected with the realisation of such plans."
The Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, yesterday also criticised an agreement signed by the British Kfor commander, Gen Mike Jackson, giving the Kosovo Liberation Army 90 days to disarm, saying this was too long. He called for the KLA to be disarmed "immediately and completely" as Russia's Federation Council, its upper house, approved the despatch of 3,600 troops to Kosovo.
Kfor planes will for the first time fly to the Russian-controlled airport of Pristina today, a French army spokesman, Capt Vincent Giraud, said.