Albanian Criminal Extremists & Terrorists in Macedonia. November 2007
Operation "Mountain Storm".
Authorities are seeking charges of terrorism against 13 suspected ethnic Albanian extremists who the government says were arrested this week with a massive weapons cache that included anti-aircraft missiles and artillery pieces.
Six suspected extremists were killed and 13 arrested Wednesday in gun battles with special police officers in and around the mountain village of Brodec near Macedonia's border with Kosovo, according to police. The volatile area was the center of an 2001 uprising by ethnic Albanian rebels.
Police spokesman Ivo Kotevski said Friday the government would recommend that charges of terrorism and activities against the state be filed against the suspects — all men — and four accomplices who evaded arrest.
Authorities said weapons, seized after the gun battle, were sufficient to equip a battalion of 650 soldiers. They included laser-guided anti-aircraft missiles, artillery pieces, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, sniper rifles, assault rifles, dynamite, hand grenades, mortars and thousands of bullets, police said.
The weapons were found Wednesday and Thursday in houses in Brodec, and in buried caches outside the village.
"This is the largest amount of weaponry ever seized (in Macedonia), with huge destructive power," Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska said Friday.
Macedonian police launched the operation to capture Lirim Jakupi, an ethnic Albanian former rebel who escaped from prison in Kosovo two months ago. But Jakupi evaded arrest.
Police described the gunmen with him as members of a "criminal gang" but on Friday suggested their motives may have been political.
"The seized bombs, grenades and mortars clearly show the criminal gang planned larger operations," a police official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to comment on the case.
Authorities said they could not say where the weapons had come from and have not identified all the gunmen killed.
Police spokesman Kotevski said one of the gun battle victims was ethnic Albanian fugitive Ramadan Shiti, who had also escaped from a Kosovo prison. He said Shiti committed suicide, placing a hand grenade under his body when he discovered he was surrounded.
Ethnic Albanians make up about a quarter of Macedonia's 2 million people.
Tags: Tetovo Macedonia Bujanovac Serbia Kosovo War AKSH UCK Albanian Terrorists Army Kosovar Extremists Greater Albania Great
