YUGOSLAVIA: KOSOVO: KACANIK: TROOPS GUARD MASSACRE SITE

(15 Jun 1999) Albanian/Nat
U-S marines are guarding a suspected mass grave in the Kosovo town of Kanacik on Tuesday.
They will guard the site until U-N war-crimes investigators arrive to inspect the graves and interview townspeople later in the day.
APTN has managed to gain an eyewitness account of the atrocities that are alleged to have occurred.
An eery silence covers this deserted town of Kacanik on the side of one of Kosovo's many mountains in the southern province of Yugoslavia.
Bullet shells lying scattered on the streets betray a gruesome reality of a town scarred from the ravages of an attack some conclude as part of an ethnic cleansing drive by Serb forces.
At this site are a number of makeshift graves.
This resident claims Serb military forces, together with the police, had descended on to the village with the sole intention of eradicating the town of ethnic Albanians.
SOUNDBITE: (Albanian)
"The Serb army came from up there, police were over there (moves hand to indicate location) so the police were waiting and these people were shot from up there. Then the police came down and killed four or five more men. After that near this river we found 32 dead bodies plus three or four in the other place, so we counted 35 dead bodies in total."
SUPER CAPTION: NAME TBC
He made up a list of names he once knew and who he claims were innocent victims of a horrific fate.
SOUNDBITE: (Albanian)
"There were quite a few of them slaughtered, including an old man named Ilir Rexha who had a stone pushed in his eye, the police did that but probably he was shot first. They did to him the worst massacre that a man can imagine."
SUPER CAPTION: NAME TBC
Earlier on Tuesday, U-S Marines arrived at a suspected mass grave site further down the hill.
They await investigators already in Skopje in neighboring Macedonia on their way to inspect the site.
Once the area around the mass grave has been de-mined and secured, the war crimes investigators will have the bodies exhumed and will begin conducting forensic tests.
Kacanik residents have already told the peacekeepers of at least two other sites in the area where massacre victims are believed to be buried.
Troops are now trying to make sure those sites are not tampered with before they can be properly examined.
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