A 20-year-old medical student at the unofficial Albanian University of Pristina in Kosovo, Macedonia, was shot dead as he walked home after celebrating his exam results.
Amend Daci had been celebrating his birthday and his second-year exam results at a friend's flat, said his father Salim, a history lecturer at the university.
The killer, described as a Serb civilian, fired a rifle from his fifth-floor apartment, shooting Daci through the heart. By the time the police arrived the killer and his family had reportedly fled.
The following morning several hundred students and local residents assembled outside the dead man's home to express sympathy and anger at the killing.
The next day the university said that "violence and terror" against ethnic Albanian young people continued with the "full harshness and brutality" of the Serbian occupying forces, and called for an end to such "criminal acts".
The board of the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, the main political voice of the ethnic Albanians who make up the vast majority of the population, described the killing as evidence of increasing ethnic tension in the province due to the recent influx of Serbian refugees, and, it alleged, the "rash actions" of the Serbian police in responding to incidents in a prejudiced manner without ascertaining the full facts.
Since 1991 when the University of Kosovo was forcibly Serbianised, its sacked and suspended ethnic Albanian lecturers have run Albanian-taught courses, holding classes in private homes and other makeshift premises. A number of European universities have helped by providing teaching materials and ratifying degrees.
Ironically Daci's death coincided with the announcement of two new lines of support. The University of Jena in Germany offered the Albanian University three grants for undergraduates and two for graduate researchers. And France is to provide two research grants for Albanian students to study French, one for postgraduate French research and one up-grading grant for a secondary schoolteacher of French as well as language text books and tapes.