People were shot in the legs and then burned when their house was set on fire. A baby was found with its head chopped off. There is tremendous rage among the Albanians when they find their family members dead when they return. And so Monday, inside the Albanian blockade, within an even tighter blockade of Dutch troops, the city's 2,500 Serbs live in a small web of narrow, steep streets, clustered around the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbs' presence there is the main reason behind the Albanians' aversion to letting Russian troops deploy in the area.
Dutch troops guard the ends of the streets with huge guns pointing outward.
They are guarding the Serbs from attacks by vengeful Albanians, but they are also preventing them from leaving, to make sure that the war crimes suspects among them do not escape. Only a few Serbs are allowed to leave each day, taken out under the protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Inside the quarter, which the residents liken to a ghetto, there is a dispirited air, but also a lingering trace of menace. People hang around the streets buying or selling a few vegetables or sweets. Young men in track suits swagger along with nowhere to go.