Riots as bodies of five men found in lake

Macedonia’s riot police have clashed with stone-throwing youths angry at the murder last week of five men near the capital Skopje…

Macedonia’s riot police have clashed with stone-throwing youths angry at the murder last week of five men near the capital Skopje.

Speculation on a motive for the killings has focused on tensions with the ethnic Albanian minority after bouts of intercommunal violence this year.

Several hundred youths of Macedonia’s Slavic-speaking majority, many in football shirts and scarves, protested in Skopje’s main square and in front of parliament, chanting nationalist and anti-Albanian slogans.

On Friday police said they had discovered the bodies of five Macedonian men at a lake near the highway north of Skopje. They said the men had been killed on the eve of Orthodox Good Friday, shot dead by more than one gunman at close range.