The Kosovo Albanian death toll in weekend fighting with Serb police rose to at least 24 yesterday as families held a mass funeral for the victims.
People from the neighbouring villages of Qirez and Likosane dug graves on a hilltop for 24 coffins including the bodies of 14 men handed over by Serb authorities in Pristina in the morning.
The villages are deep in Albanian nationalist territory south-west of Pristina where the fighting took place.
Serb authorities said earlier that the death toll comprised 16 Albanians and four Serb policemen, two of whom were buried in Belgrade yesterday at state ceremonies attended by 3,000 mourners.
Albanians had maintained since the weekend that the real toll was higher in the worst bloodshed in Serbia's southernmost province since its ethnic Albanian majority began a drive for independence after losing autonomy in 1989.
The main Albanian political party, the Democratic League of Josovo (LDK), said 28 Albanians were killed in the outbreak of violence which was condemned around the world.
The 14 bodies released in Pristina included those of 10 men from the Ahmeti family in Qirez, one of their cousins and three men who were unidentified.
Ahmeti family members said their menfolk surrendered without resistance to police who battered their way into the Ahmeti compound on Saturday. The circumstances of their deaths in custody were unclear.
Police surrounded Qirez and Likosane with roadblocks to prevent Albanian political leaders and foreign observers from attending the funerals.
Serbian authorities blamed the killing of two Serb policemen in an ambush last Friday by guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) for starting the violence.
The Yugoslav Interior Minister, Mr Zoran Sokolovic, said yesterday that the situation in Kosovo was stable and that 'things have not run out of control'.
The killings have increased international pressure on Serbian authorities to negotiate with Albanian leaders despite Belgrade's insistence that the issue is internal.
The Visiting Finnish Foreign Minister, Mr Tajra Halonen, conveyed the European Union's dismay to the Yugoslav government and the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, is expected in Belgrade later in the week to reinforce the message.
Albanian leaders were furious with the United States for equating KLA activities last month with unacceptable terrorism and apparently providing Serb police with a cover for counter-measures against Kosovo Albanians. Western diplomats were embarrassed that the Serbs had been given an excuse for overreaction to Friday's ambush.
They hinted that sanctions against Yugoslavia could be reinforced unless President Slobodan Milosevic reined in his police and negotiated some form of autonomy with Albanian political leaders.