NATO's peacekeeping force in Kosovo to commemorate the deaths of soldiers

NATO's peacekeeping force in Kosovo on Tuesday will commemorate the deaths of soldiers and other personnel killed in a plane crash as they returned home in January after serving in the disputed province.

Photo: NATO's peacekeeping force in Kosovo to commemorate the deaths of soldiers

NATO's peacekeeping force in Kosovo to commemorate the deaths of soldiers

Slovakia's defense minister Martin Fedor and Lt. Gen. Giuseppe Valotto, who commands the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, will dedicate a plaque to the 42 passengers of the AN-24 plane that crashed in January in northeastern Hungary, near the Slovak border.

Most of the passengers were Slovak soldiers on their way home from participating in a NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. Only one person survived the crash.

The plaque will be unveiled in the NATO headquarters in Kosovo's capital Pristina, at a monument of NATO peacekeepers who died while serving in Kosovo.

Kosovo, formally part of Serbia-Montenegro, has been under U.N. rule since mid-1999 when a NATO air war halted Serb forces' crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

Some 17,000 NATO-led peacekeepers are deployed in Kosovo and are in charge of the overall security in the province, reports the AP.

I.L.