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Humanitarian Law Centersis of the letter of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia andthe statements of the witnesses.From the letter of the Ministry of the Interior dated 1 March 2004, whosecontents have not been disputed by any party to the trial, it has been determinedthat, ever since 1998, on the territory of Podujevo Municipality,there has existed a guerrilla organisation, with members of Albanian nationality,that has carried out terrorist attacks mostly on the members ofthe Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia and the Army of Yugoslavia.In the beginning of May 1998, two movements - NPOK and NPRK -joined and became Kosovo Liberation Army so that the LAB zone of operationswas formed, which, from the point of view of geography, belongedto the territory of Podujevo Municipality and a part to Priština Municipality.The KLA’s military arm on the territory of this zone of operations consistedof military formations of KLA and urban and village armed forces, the socalledmilitia, with at least 2,000 fighters.The KLA had a military organisation from the level of brigade to the level ofbattalion, company and platoon operations. Each brigade had a commanderand a command headquarters and numerous units under their command,organised into battalions, companies and platoons and, in accordancewith the size of the area of operations, the corresponding number ofmilitia forces, from a single platoon to a company, whose real function wasto be a strategic reserve for militarily active KLA formations.These forces, consisting of armed civilians, were commanded by the commanderof the local village or settlement headquarters responsible, in histurn, to the brigade commander whose area of operations included thecommander of the headquarters of the LAB zone of operations. So that KLAhad a military organisation, material means, responsible command andthe ability to control parts of the territory of Kosovo, which made it possiblefor this organisation to carry out continuous and harmonised militaryactions.The conflicts between KLA forces and the security forces of the Republic ofSerbia - the army and the police - in view of their nature, means and objectives,represented internal armed conflicts which began long before thesaid events in Podujevo and continued after the beginning of the war be-292