SLATINA, Yugoslavia, December 27 (AVN) - Russian peacekeepers have rendered harmless some 10,000 explosive devices since their arrival in Kosovo in June 1999, the head of the Russian Military Contingent's engineering service, Colonel Vladimir Romanovsky, said on Wednesday.
Most of the devices were NATO-made aviation cluster bombs, as well as anti-personnel and anti-tank mines made in Yugoslavia, Romanovsky said.
"Professionalism of our sappers has been praised by both Serbs and Albanians," the colonel went on. "Mine clearing groups operating in all areas controlled by the Russian Military Contingent have never failed to defuse an explosive device," he stressed.
Sappers led by Major Andrei Sbitnev, commander of an engineering company, destroyed a batch of confiscated arms and ammo on the outskirts of the Slatina airfield early on Wednesday, a spokesman for the contingent headquarters told the Military News Agency. They blew up two 60mm mortars, 30 mortar mines, 11 hand grenades and over 5,000 small arms cartridges.