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On the morning of 23 April 1998, a band of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters was ambushed by a much smaller group of Yugoslav Army (VJ) border guards near the Košare outpost, just west of Dečani. The fighters had been trying to smuggle weapons and supplies into Kosovo via northern Albania. Nineteen were killed in the ensuing attack, and a further two were captured. The VJ did not sustain any casualties. Some of the militants retreated back into Albania, while others managed to break through the ambush and make it past the Yugoslav border, into Kosovo. Following the clash, the VJ confiscated a large quantity of arms that the militants had been transporting. Villagers in northern Albania and western Kosovo reported hearing explosions in the vicinity of the ambush and seeing helicopters flying overhead for much of the following day. Albanian officials later alleged that two of these helicopters had violated the country's airspace, and Albania moved elite army units to the Yugoslav border in response. Yugoslav authorities accused Albania of backing the KLA. In response to the ambush, U.S. officials indicated that they would push for sanctions to be re-implemented against Yugoslavia, and said they would look to freeze the country's assets overseas. Some Albanian sources alleged that the men had not been ambushed, rather they were abducted and killed by Yugoslav security forces. Such claims could not be verified by Western journalists, and later that year, Amnesty International affirmed that the men were killed in an ambush while smuggling weapons across the border. ==Background== Following World War II, Kosovo was given the status of an autonomous province within the Socialist Republic of Serbia, one of six constitutional republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After the death of Yugoslavia's long-time leader (Josip Broz Tito) in 1980, Yugoslavia's political system began to unravel.〔Judah, pp. 38–9〕 In 1989, Belgrade revoked Kosovo's autonomy. Kosovo, a province inhabited predominantly by ethnic Albanians, was of great historical and cultural significance to Serbs, who had formed a majority there before the mid-19th century, but by 1990 represented only about 10 percent of the population. Alarmed by their dwindling numbers, the province's Serbs began to fear that they were being "squeezed out" by the Albanians, and ethnic tensions worsened. As soon as Kosovo's autonomy was abolished, a minority government run by Serbs and Montenegrins was appointed by Serbian President Slobodan Milošević to oversee the province, enforced by thousands of heavily armed paramilitaries from Serbia-proper. Albanian culture was systematically repressed and hundreds of thousands of Albanians working in state-owned companies lost their jobs.〔 In 1996, a ragtag group of Albanian nationalists calling themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began attacking the Yugoslav Army (; VJ) and the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (; MUP) in Kosovo. Their goal was to separate the province from the rest of Yugoslavia, which following the secession of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1991–92, was just a rump federation consisting of Serbia and Montenegro. At first, the KLA carried out hit-and-run attacks (31 in 1996, 55 in 1997, and 66 in January and February 1998 alone).〔Judah, p. 137〕 It quickly gained popularity among young Kosovo Albanians, many of whom rejected the non-violent resistance to Yugoslav authorities advocated by the politician Ibrahim Rugova and favoured a more aggressive approach. The organization received a significant boost in 1997, when an armed uprising in neighbouring Albania led to thousands of weapons from the Albanian Army's depots being looted. Many of these weapons ended up in the hands of the KLA, which already had substantial resources due its involvement in the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people, as well as through donations from the Albanian diaspora.〔Judah, pp. x, 127–30〕 Cross-border arms smuggling flourished; the unit charged with securing the Yugoslav border was the 549th Motorized Brigade, under the command of General Božidar Delić. The KLA's popularity skyrocketed after the VJ and MUP attacked the compound of KLA leader Adem Jashari in March 1998, killing him, his closest associates and most of his family. The attack motivated thousands of young Kosovo Albanians to join the ranks of the KLA, fueling the Kosovar uprising that eventually erupted in the spring of 1998.〔Judah, pp. 138–41〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「April 23, 1998 Albanian–Yugoslav border ambush」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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