Tensions soared in northern Kosovo after unknown attackers exchanged gunfire with police and threw a stun grenade at European Union officers overnight.
Hundreds of ethnic Serbs, outraged over the arrest of a former police officer, gathered early Sunday at roadblocks they erected the previous day, paralysing traffic at two border crossings from Kosovo towards Serbia.
Although Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, Belgrade does not recognise it and encourages the Serb community in northern Kosovo to defy Pristina’s authority.
Hours after the barricades went up, police said they suffered three successive attacks on Saturday night on one of the roads leading to the border.
“The police units, in self-defence, were forced to respond with firearms to the criminal persons and groups who were repelled and left in an unknown direction,” police said in a statement.
The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) said they were also targetted with a stun grenade, but no officers were injured.
“This attack, as well as the attacks on Kosovo police officers, are unacceptable,” EULEX said in a press release.
EULEX – which has some 134 Polish, Italian and Lithuanian police officers deployed in the north – called on “those responsible to refrain from more provocative actions”, and said it urged the Kosovo institutions “to bring the perpetrators to justice”.
‘Masked criminals’
Animosity has mounted after Kosovo scheduled local elections in four ethnic Serb-majority municipalities in the north for December 18, with the main Serb political party saying it would stage a boycott.
Explosions and shootings were heard earlier this week as election authorities tried to prepare the ground for the vote, while an ethnic Albanian policeman was wounded after law enforcement was deployed in the region.
