PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro — Investigators searched for evidence and interviewed witnesses yesterday in an attempt to determine why a Jordanian U.N. police officer opened fire on U.S. correctional officers in Kosovo, killing two.
The Jordanian officer was also killed in the shootout Saturday at the U.N.-run prison in the northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica.
The shooting was the latest shock for the U.N. mission in the province, which became a U.N. protectorate in 1999 after NATO conducted a 78-day air war to stop former President Slobodan Milosevic from cracking down on ethnic Albanians seeking independence.
The 3,500-strong U.N. police force includes 450 U.S. officers, most of whom work for Dyncorp, a private company that trains police, corrections and judicial officers who work in places such as Kosovo and Iraq. The U.N. police force works alongside 6,000 local police officers.
It is still not clear what sparked the shooting between officers from the police and correctional units of the U.N. mission. Ten Americans and one Austrian were injured in the violence.
U.N. investigators went door-to-door in apartment buildings overlooking the prison compound yesterday, interviewing witnesses.
Officials denied rumors that a quarrel about the war in Iraq had sparked the gunbattle.
“As far as we know, there was no communication between the officer who fired and the group of victims,” said Neeraj Singh, a U.N. spokesman.
But a U.S. police officer serving with the U.N. mission said the shooting was “clearly an attack against Americans.” The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not elaborate.
The gunbattle began as three U.N. vehicles carrying 21 U.S. correctional officers, two Turkish officers and one Austrian were leaving the prison, which was guarded by five Jordanian special police unit officers, officials said.
The correctional officers had arrived in Kosovo just 10 days earlier and were training at the prison.
At least one Jordanian officer, identified by Jordan’s government as Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali, started firing at the convoy, said Stefan Feller, the head of the U.N. police in Kosovo.
The other officers returned fire, and in the ensuing 10-minute gunbattle, two female American officers and Mr. Ali were killed, he said.
The names of the dead Americans have not been released.
The four other Jordanian police officers at the prison were detained after the shooting, officials said, and authorities have requested that their diplomatic immunity be lifted so they can be interrogated by investigators.
One seriously wounded U.S. officer, who has not been identified, was transported to neighboring Macedonia for brain surgery, said Maj. Chris Cole, a spokesman for the U.S. peacekeepers in Kosovo.
The other injured U.S. officers were being treated in Kosovo.
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