US peacekeepers have swept through eastern Kosovo seizing quantities of cached arms, ammunition and uniforms in an attempt to seal the border with Serbia to insurgents, US sources said yesterday.
The operation on Wednesday was part of a US "interdiction strategy to prevent cross-boundary activity by any insurgent groups using Kosovo as an operating base," Maj Debbie Allen, a Task Force Falcon spokeswoman, said.
She said US troops would continue using their military muscle to prevent cross-border insurgents operating out of eastern Kosovo.
"This won't be the last time. Everything we find that's suspicious we'll act upon," Ms Allen, who went on Wednesday's raid, said.
"It was a real down-to-earth soldier mission. We used intelligence developed from a variety of sources, including aerial surveillance."
"Our soldiers searched buildings believed to contain weapons and explosives using search dogs. We turned up a lot of stuff and we detained nine suspects," Ms Allen said.
Contraband seized included 22 crates of ammunition and more than 200 uniforms, mortar tubes, hand grenades, a few rifles, mines, rucksacks, sleeping bags, explosives and fuses.
Aimed at five target areas along a 28 km stretch of the border, the search was carried out by four helicopters and 300 soldiers and uncovered at least one location that the Americans identified as a likely "training or staging" base.
Wednesday's operation took place along a 28 km stretch of the administrative boundary between Kosovo and Serbia.
Both lie within Yugoslavia, but the UN and the international Kfor peacekeeping mission took control of Kosovo after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced Belgrade's security forces to withdraw last June.
American troops cordoned off an area around five villages on Wednesday. Ms Allen was with troops that searched Donje Dunavo.
"We entered a house from which people obviously had just fled. The stove and the beds were warm," she said.
"We found stores of uniforms, foodstuffs, training manuals and some hand grenades - the sort and quantity of stuff you would expect to find supporting insurgents in the field."
"Some of the hand grenades had been rigged for booby traps, as were landmines that we found elsewhere in the village. We believe that Donje Dunavo was a base of some sort. We captured two men who had fled from the house," she added.
Meanwhile, Yugoslav authorities shut down a local television station critical of the government yesterday in the second such action in a week, Belgrade media said.
Police and telecommunications inspectors broke into TV Pirot in southern Serbia early in the morning, seized the equipment and left a notice saying they had conducted an inspection, a local reporter told independent radio B292.
The opposition condemned the action as an attempt by President Slobodan Milosevic's administration to stifle independent news media. Independent media organisations called on the "democratic public" to help fight what it termed a government media clampdown.
Mr Dragan Banjac, vice-president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, told reporters that journalists alone could not fight daily closures of both independent and opposition media.
"The entire democratic public must take up the defence. If they do not, complete silence and darkness will engulf Serbia," Mr Banjac said.
Mr Veran Matic, head of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), said the media themselves could not organise political actions but he expressed the hope that Serbia's recently united opposition would make a move.
The opposition-run Belgrade city council yesterday condemned the state's media crackdown. It called on Serbian people and other town councils to use every legal democratic means at their disposal to resist attempts to curb the media.
The Federal Telecommunication Ministry issued a statement saying it had closed TV Pirot and would reopen it when it "fulfils conditions determined by the law", the state news agency Tanjug said.