Blast in Kosovo injures seven people
A powerful blast injured seven people in Kosovo’s southwestern town of Prizren in an apparent clash between rival gangs of human traffickers, Kosovo police said Monday.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Tuesday, December 04, 2007
The list of injured included a Bulgarian women, Mariana Ilieva Borisova, which led to conclusion that explosion might be connected with a widespread human smuggling networks which run through the porous borders between southern Kosovo, western Macedonia and Albania proper.
Two of the seven injured, a Kosovo Albanian and a woman from neighboring Albania, have been seriously wounded in an explosion which shattered some 30 window shops.
Interpol estimates that some 200.000 victims of human trafficking have been smuggled, tortured, forced into prostitution through that area annually during the past 12 years, mainly on the way for Western Europe, but also for Kosovo.
Organized crime had been hampering the internationally supported efforts to stabilize southern Balkans after a decade of lawlessness, suffering and bloody ethnic conflicts which generated an estimated annual revenue of some 7 billion U.S. dollars from illegal drugs trade, human trafficking and gun smuggling.
