The situation in Radisane, a suburb of the Macedonian capital of Skopje where five men were killed on Thursday, is still tense and the police are investigating the murders, the local media reported on Saturday.
Four men aged 18-20 and a 45-year-old man were found dead near Zeljezarsko Jezero, a popular angling location in the northern suburb of Radisevo, on Thursday evening.
The unheard-of crime has prompted residents of Skopje to block roads, demanding that the police find the perpetrators as soon as possible. The media have reported a strong police presence in the city.
Flags were flying at half-mast on Saturday, the day of the burial of the five victims, with the Skopje municipality of Butel having declared a day of mourning.
Police have said that they will question about 50 people in connection with the crime.
Minister of the Interior Gordana Jankulovska said that there were some leads regarding the perpetrators and the motive.
All political parties have expressed their condolences to the victims' families, demanding a swift investigation and calling on citizens to demonstrate calm and restraint, as have the European Union mission in Skopje, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the US embassy.
The victims were found by anglers on Thursday evening. The position of the bodies of the four young men resembled an execution by shooting. The body of the 45-year-old man was found slightly further away, which makes his brother believe that he was killed because he accidentally witnessed the murder of the four youths.
Reports of the murders have caused tensions between Macedonians and ethnic Albanians, prompting the police to send additional forces to the area.
Hundreds of angry Macedonians gathered on Friday near the murder site, blocking traffic and demanding that the perpetrators be found.
Several dozen protesters raided an area mainly populated by Albanians, demanding revenge for the murders, even though according to media reports nothing indicates that the perpetrators were Albanians.
The inter-ethnic tensions, which are only to be heightened on the eve of Easter, which Macedonians celebrate according to the Julian calendar, started in February when a Macedonian police officer off duty killed two young Albanian men in the northwestern town of Gostivar. That triggered the worst violence since 2001, when the country came very close to a civil war.
In the first half of March, gangs of young men attacked buses in the capital Skopje and other towns, injuring at least 15 people. The police arrested more than 30 suspects at the time, after which the violence started subsiding.
