They buried Nerimane Gjaka (46) in the part of Mitrovica cemetery they call Martyrs' Corner. The other occupants of this part of the graveyard are all fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army, but the Albanian population of Mitrovica decided that she deserved a hero's burial.
She was just the latest of the victims of a massively violent wave of ethnically motivated killing that has swept the town of Mitrovica since last week, leaving eight people dead, nearly 50 injured, massive destruction and NATO and the UN powerless to prevent it.
Mitrovica is a divided town: the Serbs live on the north, the Albanians on the south. Between them runs the grey river Ibar, crossed by a bridge controlled by French NATO troops, and battled over by both sides. Violence in Kosovo is an everyday event, but when a UN bus driving Serbs on a shopping trip was hit by an anti-tank rocket last Wednesday, revenge was fast coming. On Thursday night 500 drunken, armed Serbs went on the rampage in northern Mitrovica, looking for Albanians.
"Eleven of us were in the apartment," said Gani Gjaka (47). "We knew the Serbs were out hunting. At 9.30 they hit our door, shooting. Three hand-grenades came in. We tried to fight back. My wife was hit."
Nerimane Gjaka lay bleeding to death on the carpet, her intestines coiling out of her abdomen. Gani picked up the telephone to dial for help from the UN police, from NATO, anyone. "I got through to the UN police at 10 past 10," he said. "They said they were on their way, they only had 600 metres to come. It took them four-and-a-half hours. My wife was beyond help."
"Mitrovica went mad that night," says one UN police officer in the northern part of the city. "The Danish NATO troops were on the radio, saying they were going to open fire on children throwing Molotov cocktails. We didn't have enough radios, enough guns, enough transport."
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, says that an estimated 97 people were attacked by Serbs that night. The Albanian population has started to flee the north, they say, with over a thousand people having vacated their property in the last four days. In the ensuing night of violence, 15 Serbs were hand-grenaded in a bar, five Albanians were killed, five NATO peacekeepers injured, seven UN vehicles burnt, and all international agencies withdrawn from the north side of the river.
Three days of rioting in Mitrovica followed, leaving another two people dead, another 11 French NATO troops injured, a 15-year-old boy shot by a suspected Serb sniper on Saturday, another hand-grenade attack on a Serb village on Saturday night, Serb paramilitaries openly patrolling the streets of northern Mitrovica, and a huge French NATO contingent that Albanians claim is massively biased in favour of the Serbs.
French soldiers and paramilitary police in full riot gear prevent anybody from crossing the river Ibar. On the north side are routinely gathered hundreds of Serbs. On the south, the Albanians. The streets around the bridge, and the bridge itself, are covered with hundreds of broken bottles, rocks, planks, expended tear-gas grenades, cartridge cases. Everywhere is the slick, brown mud of the Kosovan winter. "All I saw when the violence was happening was seven or eight Serbs with guns," says Gani Gjaka, standing near his wife's fresh grave. "And I thought, this is it. It's starting all over again, all over Kosovo."