PRISTINA--Several thousand people gathered at a university in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Tuesday for the funeral of eight ethnic Albanian gunmen killed in clashes with security forces in Macedonia earlier this month.
Former Kosovo guerrilla fighters, and family members clutching photos of the dead, were among the mourners at the ceremony in a Pristina University gymnasium.
Former members of the now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), wearing military uniform, carried the eight coffins into the hall for the ceremony. The KLA is an ethnic Albanian guerilla group that fought for the independence of Kosovo in the 1990s.
Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of the 1.8 million-strong population of Kosovo, which unilaterally proclaimed independence from Serbia in 2008.
The coffins were to later be taken for burial in the Martyrs' Cemetery, a military cemetery for prominent KLA members.
KLA veterans said that the Kosovans killed in the Macedonia clashes, which left 18 people dead, including eight police officers, fought in the 1998-1999 war for independence against the forces of then Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
There were no government officials present at Tuesday's commemoration.
The bodies of nine Kosovans were handed over to Pristina authorities last week after their relatives travelled to Macedonia's capital Skopje to identify the bodies.
Hundreds of people, standing in silence with raised flags, stood to attention when the cortege bearing their coffins crossed the border into Kosovo last Friday.
The ninth gunman was buried Sunday in his family's village of Glogjan in western Kosovo.
Macedonia labelled the gunmen killed in the northern town of Kumanovo "terrorists" and claimed they were planning to attack state institutions.
Police arrested 30 alleged gunmen of ethnic Albanian origin, the majority of them from Kosovo, and charged them with terrorism.
AFP
