That spark came on Tuesday, in Cabra. This dilapidated village of 1,400 Albanians lies on Kosovo's ethnic faultline, which divides the mostly Serb north of the province from the mostly Albanian south. The shells of the clapped-out cars that litter its unpaved roads are only a couple of hundred yards from the front doorsteps of the neighbouring Serb village, Zupce. Between them runs the River Ibar, a frontier that means more than any official border crossing in Kosovo.
On Tuesday, Egzon Deliu (with 3 friends) decided to cross that frontier to spend the afternoon playing on the other side of the line.
"He said that four of them were playing on the other side of the river, when a crowd from the Serb village started shouting insults at them," says his father. "They started to run, but the Serbs set dogs on them and they could not get to the bridge. So they jumped in the river."
According to Fitim, the Ibar, narrow, fast-flowing and bitterly cold, quickly swept away Egzon and another boy, 11-year-old Avni Veseli. Fitim tried to carry his younger brother, Florent, on his back.
"Three times Florent fell off, and on the third time Fitim couldn't rescue him."
Within minutes, hundreds of villagers from Cabra were scouring the river banks, and by midnight they had recovered the body of Egzon Deliu.
On the streets of Cabra, there is no talk of a peaceful solution. "The Serbs don't have human blood," says Minire Deliu, Egzon's cousin. "But they will get what they deserve for this miserable thing they have done."
That process of retribution began almost immediately. Though there has been no independent confirmation of Fitim's story, none was needed. For ethnic Albanians, only Serbs would unleash dogs to chase children to their deaths. "Using dogs was inhuman," says Argim Hassani, Cabra's mayor.
