Macedonia Hands over Nine Killed in Shootout to Kosovo

Macedonian authorities handed over to Kosovo on Friday the bodies of nine ethnic Albanian gunmen killed in clashes with the police earlier this month, officials said.

The return of the bodies was made possible after relatives identified the bodies in Macedonia's capital Skopje, the head of Kosovo's forensic department, Arsim Gerxhaliu, told reporters. 

On relatives' request, Kosovo prosecutor Ali Rexha said he was weighing whether to order autopsies, although they had already been performed by Macedonian authorities.

The cortege carrying the nine metal coffins was honoured in silence by hundreds of Kosovars with raised flags when it entered Kosovo at a border crossing, local media reported.

The May 9-10 clashes in the northern Macedonia town of Kumanovo between police and ethnic Albanian gunmen, most of whom were from neighbouring Kosovo, left 18 people dead, including eight police officers.

Skopje labelled the gunmen "terrorists" and claimed they were planning to attack Macedonia's state institutions.

Veterans of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which fought the security forces of then Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the 1998-1999 war, said that those killed in Kumanovo had participated in the Kosovo war.

Following the shooting in Kumanovo the Macedonian police arrested 30 alleged gunmen of ethnic Albanian origin, the majority of them from Kosovo, and charged them with terrorism.

The violence in Kumanovo was the worst unrest in the former Yugoslav republic since its 2001 conflict between the government and ethnic Albanian rebels, raising fears of fresh ethnic unrest.

Ethnic Albanians make up around one quarter of Macedonia's 2.1 million people.