Aid worker in Kosovo killed in cluster bomb incident, UN mine centre reports

One aide worker was killed, another injured, in an incident involving a cluster bomb unit in Kosovo, the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in the province has reported.

The two Halo Trust staff members were working in Grebnik in western Kosovo when the incident occurred on Friday. The injured worker remains in hospital today. Halo Trust says that the problem of contamination resulting from NATO cluster bomb strikes remains a major problem in the area.

Meanwhile, it was announced today that the international prosecutor in Mitrovica has abandoned the genocide charges against Igor Simic, a Kosovo Serb man accused of helping to murder 26 ethnic Albanians in April 1999. A UN spokesman said Simic had been held in prison since August 1999.

In another development today, the international security force in Kosovo (KFOR) announced that one of its helicopters went down five kilometers west of Kacanik in southern Kosovo near the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Seven KFOR personnel were aboard the British helicopter. No details on casualties were available, a UN spokesman said early this afternoon.