PRISTINA, Yugoslavia — An attacker opened fire on a group of Serbs gathered in a store in an eastern Kosovo village patrolled by U.S. soldiers, killing a 4-year-old boy and two men, NATO peacekeepers said Monday.
Two men injured in Sunday's attack in Cernica were being treated at a U.S. military hospital at Camp Bondsteel, said Capt. Russell Berg, spokesman for American forces stationed in Kosovo. An ethnic Albanian suspect remained at large, he said.
The attacker used an automatic weapon to kill Milos Petrovic, 4, his grandfather, Vojin Vasic, 60, and Tihomir Simjanovic, 45, said Lt. Scott Olson, spokesman for U.S. forces at nearby Camp Monteith.
The village 28 miles southeast of the capital, Pristina, is patrolled by U.S. peacekeepers who were only a few hundred yards away, Olson said.
"They heard the gunfire and ran in that direction," he said.
The soldiers evacuated the wounded to a hilltop near the local Serbian Orthodox Church so a helicopter could land and ferry them to the hospital. The three died before the helicopter arrived, Olson said.
The top U.N. official in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, immediately denounced the attack, insisting that only the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic stands to gain by unrest in this southern Serb province.
"What can possibly be gained by killing a child?" he said in a prepared statement.
Quoting Serb sources in the province, the Belgrade-based independent Beta news agency said the suspect was an ethnic Albanian and reported he had bragged earlier about killing two other people in Cernica.
NATO declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Beta also said NATO peacekeepers tried to calm the Serb villagers, who were distraught and angry after the attack.
The timing of the attack was frustrating for U.S. peacekeepers, who had been trying to set up a meeting between the community's ethnic Albanian and Serb leaders in a bid to work out problems and build trust.
It was the third time such a meeting was close at hand — only to be scuttled by violence.
"It is a striking coincidence," Olson said sadly.
President Slobodan Milosevic lashed out at the West Monday for bombing Yugoslavia last year.
"The aggression of NATO was one of the cruelest, worst violence on humanity in the second half of the 20th century," Milosevic said, addressing thousands of cheering supporters as he inaugurated a rebuilt railway bridge across the Danube River in Novi Sad, 50 miles north of the capital, Belgrade. The bridge was destroyed in the bombing.
NATO launched airstrikes last year to force Milosevic to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Serbia's southern, Albanian-majority province. After 78 days of bombing, Yugoslav army and police were forced to withdraw from Kosovo.