Serbs killed in buffer zone attack

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Two Serb policemen have been killed and one critically injured in an attack in the buffer zone between Kosovo and southern Serbia.

The attack took place in the village of Muhovac near the town of Bujanovac at 10:30 p.m. (2030 GMT) on Friday.

It is the first time a serious incident has taken place in the remote region since May, when Yugoslav forces regained control of the area in southern Serbia -- the larger of Yugoslavia's two republics.

A top-ranking police official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press a renegade rebel group launched the attack.

Rebels sprayed gunfire into a police camp, killing Dragan Brcarevic and Miodrag Mladenovic, the source said.

A rebel group known as the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) agreed in May to disarm under a NATO-brokered deal in return for political and economic measures to benefit the region's large Albanian community.

Kosovo came under U.N. and NATO administration in 1999, after NATO's military campaign against Yugoslav and Serb troops in Kosovo.

NATO set up the five-kilometre-wide (three-mile-wide) region as a buffer between the province and the rest of Serbia.

It allowed Yugoslav forces to regain control of the zone after former President Slobodan Milosevic fell from power last October.

A leading former UCPMB official told Reuters the disbanded group was not involved in Friday's incident.

"We have no idea what happened, the UCPMB has nothing to do with this," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters in Albanian-dominated Kosovo.