Kosovo police believe yesterday's bombing was related to criminal gangs and not the political tensions in the area.

Kosovo has been governed by the United Nations since 1999, though it is still officially a province of Serbia.

The majority of Kosovo's population is ethnic Albanian and they have vied with Serbs for control of the region throughout the 20th century.

It was declared an autonomous state of Serbia in 1974. Prior to that it had been part of the Yugoslav federation.

Preassure mounted for an independent Kosovo in the 1980s but when Slobodan Milosevic became president of Yugoslavia in 1989 he stripped Kosovo of its autonomy.

Soon after the Kosovo Liberation Army, a rebel group, began attacking Serb targets.

By the summer of 1998, Albanians were mounting mass protests against Serbian rule and police and army reinforcements were sent in to crush the KLA.

A cease-fire was brokered by the international community but did not last long. On January 16, 1999, the bodies of 45 Albanian civilians were found in the town of Racak. The victims had been executed by Serb forces.

The continued persecution of Kosovo Albanians led to the start of NATO air strikes against targets in Kosovo and Serbia in March 1999.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro after the Serbian forces began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kosovo Albanians. The international tribunal in The Hague said its investigators had found at least 2,000 bodies.

Milosevic withdrew his troops and police after 11 weeks of bombing, the BBC stated that approximately 10,000 people died during the Kosovo war.

This Friday the ethnic Albanian leadership of Kosovo and a senior Serbian team will meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Western nations have supported the independence plan but Serbian ally Russia has blocked it in the UN Security Council.