Natural Sound The funeral has taken place of the aide to the ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova and head of the Kosovo Information Centre Enver Maloku who was killed on Monday by unknown gunmen, in the northern village of Bradash in Kosovo. About 70 ethnic Albanian journalists and others marched somberly through downtown Pristina earlier on Tuesday during a one-day strike to protest his killing. The death of the head of the province's Kosovo Information Center added new tension to talks aimed at securing the release of the soldiers. More than a thousand ethnic Albanians gathered in the muddy yard outside the village mosque in Bradash. They were there to say goodbye to a prominent journalist and political aide whose killing on Monday shocked the Albanian community. Remembered as the "shining star" of Kosovo, Enver Maloku, who was shot outside his Pristina home, was laid to rest in the village of his birth, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Kosovo's provincial capital. Following the short ceremony, Maloku's body - wrapped in blankets covered by the red-and-black eagle of the Albanian flag - was carried up the hill to the local cemetery. Maloku first became well-known among ethnic Albanians during the 1980s, when he worked for the local television station. He later left journalism to enter politics. Maloku joined the leader of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, in his fight for a peaceful independence for Kosovo as leader of the Kosovo Information Center, which reflected Rugova's views. In a letter of condolence to Maloku's widow and three children, Rugova said, "The assassination of Maloku is an attack on Albanian freedom of speech." More than one-thousand people have been killed since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched the crackdown in the province last February. You can license this story through AP Archive: www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/3b6a2e678b684dd43121f2683e0929d8 Find out more about AP Archive: www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

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