KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Jan 11, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) The director of the main hospital in the northern, Serb-majority part of Kosovo, on Thursday blamed depleted uranium NATO munitions for what he said was a huge increase in cancer cases in his region.

Milan Ivanovic, himself a Kosovo Serb, told AFP that cancer cases referred to the Serb hospital in Kosovksa Mitrovica had shot up by 200 percent since NATO's 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia.

"I think the main reason for the sizable increase in cancer cases, which numbered 160 last year, could only be due to NATO's bombardment with depleted uranium (DU)," Ivanovic said at the hospital.

"I think the figure will go up still further, with many cases not yet diagnosed," he added, explaining that the elderly were worst affected but that there had been an "abnormal" increase in cases among men of military age.

He offered no scientific evidence to support his statement, however.

On Wednesday Marko Jaksic, leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia and a senior ally of President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia in the breakaway province of Kosovo, told the news agency Beta that army reservists had been struck with DU-related cancers.

Ivanovic said that four cases of throat cancer had come from a single village sited near a television transmitter targeted by NATO jets during the bombardments.

"40 percent of my patients come from areas which were bombarded by depleted uranium," he said. Ivanovic also claimed that there had been an increase in the amount of babies born dead, prematurely or deformed.

But two other doctors in the hospital, Dragisa Cvetinic and Selimir Klicanin, were more circumspect, refusing to draw a direct link between the cancer cases and the DU shells.