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On December 14, 1998 the Yugoslav Army (VJ) ambushed a group of 140 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militants attempting to smuggle weapons and supplies from their base in Albania into the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A five-hour battle ensued, ending with the deaths of 36 militants and the capture of a further nine. Dozens more fled back to Albania, abandoning large quantities of weapons and supplies, which were subsequently seized by the Yugoslav authorities. The ambush was the most serious war-related incident in Kosovo since a U.S.-negotiated truce between the VJ and the KLA had taken effect two months before. It came on the heels of increasing tensions in the province, where inter-ethnic violence had been steadily escalating since early 1996. Within hours of the ambush, suspected KLA gunmen attacked a Serb-owned café in Peć, killing six unarmed Serb youths. Western diplomats suspected the attack was carried out in retaliation for the ambush, though the KLA denied responsibility. Several days after, Yugoslav authorities handed over the bodies of all but three of the fallen militants, following mediation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The 33 militants were given hero's funerals in a rebel-held area, in a ceremony attended by thousands of ethnic Albanians, including other KLA fighters. In January 1999, the KLA abducted eight VJ personnel, who were later exchanged for the nine militants captured in the ambush. ==Background== In 1989, Belgrade abolished self-rule in Serbia's two autonomous provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo. Kosovo, a province inhabited predominantly by ethnic Albanians, was of great historical and cultural significance to Serbs. Prior to the mid-19th century they had formed a majority in the province, 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, with whom ethnic tensions had been brewing since the early 1980s. 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). The group quickly gained popularity among young Kosovo Albanians. Many of whom favoured an aggressive approach and rejected the idea of non-violent resistance advocated by the politician Ibrahim Rugova. 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, or through donations from the Albanian diaspora.〔Judah, pp. x, 127–30〕 The group'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〕 The Kosovo conflict escalated over the summer of 1998. The KLA increasingly took to smuggling weapons and supplies from Albania across the border into Kosovo. In September, Yugoslav officials stated that 90 militants had been killed while attempting to illegally cross the border since January of that year. The Yugoslav Defense Ministry reported that 947 rifles, 161 light machine guns, 33 mortars, 55 mines, 3,295 hand grenades, and almost 350,000 rounds of ammunition had been confiscated by the VJ and Yugoslav border guards in the same period. In October, Milošević and the U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke reached an agreement to temporarily end the fighting, whereby Yugoslavia would halve the amount of troops and police personnel it had stationed in Kosovo. The agreement came after Holbrooke convinced the KLA to consider negotiations with Belgrade while making it clear to Milošević that failing to find a peaceful solution to the conflict would lead to a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia.〔Judah, pp. 187–89〕 The agreement stipulated that Yugoslavia had to allow Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) observers to enter Kosovo to ensure that the Yugoslavs was abiding by their commitment to withdraw thousands of soldier and police officers from the province. Small-scale clashes continued, and by December, over 1,000 people had been killed and more than 300,000 displaced in the fighting. 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「December 14, 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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