Albania denied supporting the KLA insurgency, and alleged that two Yugoslav helicopters had violated its airspace. Yugoslavia denied that there had been any violations. Consequently, the Albanian Army and police were placed on high alert, and the country stationed elite troops along its border. On April 27, nine of the fallen militants were buried in Erec. Some 400 ethnic Albanians attended their funerals. The dead ranged in age from seventeen to forty-five years old. Villagers claimed that some of the dead had been arrested days before their deaths and thus could not have been ambushed, as the Yugoslav authorities claimed. Such claims could not be independently verified by Western reporters. In a 1998 report, Amnesty International affirmed that the 19 men had been killed in an ambush while trying to smuggle weapons into Kosovo.