Peacekeeper’s Death Blamed on Accident

A British peacekeeper killed by a gunshot wound in Kosovo apparently was the victim of an accident with his own weapon rather than of hostilities, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said.

The peacekeeper was standing guard late Monday outside a Serbian Orthodox church in Pristina, the provincial capital, when he was shot once in the head.

The gun involved “was his personal weapon,” said Lt. Col. Jeremy Mooney, a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main republic. The soldier was identified as Pvt. James Carl Rogers of Swansea, Wales.