Vucic maintains that the armed individuals are Kosovo Serbs and not military personnel. The latest balance is of three individuals dead and six more detained
The security forces of Kosovo They keep around thirty armed men surrounded who are barricaded in the Banjska monastery, a Serbian Orthodox temple. A Kosovo police officer died and two more were injured this Sunday and the assailants suffered three deaths and six arrests in an incident that Pristina blames on Belgrade.
The Kosovo Minister of the Interior, Xelal Sveçla, has confirmed The latest balance: three individuals dead and six more arrested. Sveçla has also visited the place where a Kosovo police officer was shot dead and has confirmed his identity: Afrim Bunjaku, according to Kosovo public television, RTK.
The Kosovo Police has also confirmed the arrest of several armed individuals in the town of Rudare, where Communication devices belonging to these “criminal groups” have been seized. Weapons, ammunition and other types of material have also been found.
“The situation remains tense and the attacks with firearms against Police units continue with the same intensity,” the Police highlighted.
In Rudare in a routine vehicle check Four suspects have been arrested in possession of radios “who are suspected to be related to criminal groups.”
Kosovo accuses Serbia
The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, was the one who reported the confrontation in the Banjska monastery, located in the municipality of Zvecan, in the Serb-majority area of northern Kosovo, according to the news portal BalkanInsight. In the monastery there would also be several monks and faithful who would be locked inside the building.
“There are at least 30 heavily armed people that are surrounded by our police forces. I urge you to surrender to our security forces,” Kurti appealed at a press conference from Pristina. “They are not ordinary citizens of Kosovo. “It is professional training,” he assured.
Shortly afterwards he published on the social network X, formerly Twitter, that “forces supported by the Serbian state” have perpetrated “terrorist attacks“. They are “armed, organized and professional men with armored vehicles without license plates,” he denounced. “
Kurti showed at the press conference several photographs of the surroundings of the monastery with “heavily armed people with military equipment and masks.” “They had jeeps and armored vehicles,” he highlighted.. Among the suspects is an individual who “carries a zolja (self-propelled anti-tank grenade) on his back.”
The Kosovo president explained that at first they thought they were smugglers, but “they are not the usual gangs of smugglers with which the Police are accustomed to dealing in the north of the country.
Meanwhile, the Kosovo Serb minister Nenad Rashiq has explained that two attackers are dead, another wounded and another detained, according to statements collected by the Serbian media Nova. “The situation is dramatic (…). There are news of several people killed in the fighting. This morning the Police urged them to surrender, but there is no communication between the two parties,” Rashiq said.
“The police talk to the attackers with a megaphone, but there is no response. The situation around the Banjska monastery remains dramatic. There are no signs of it calming down anytime soon.“added Rashiq, citing sources from the Kosovo Police.
Rashiq explained that the NATO Mission in Kosovo (KFOR) is mediating to calm the situation. “Diplomacy must convince or force these people to surrender because nobody wants more bloodshed,” he highlighted.
Previously, the president of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, had denounced an attack “orchestrated by Serbian criminal gangs” and denounced an “attack against the sovereignty” of Kosovo.
The Kosovo Police had reported the detection at dawn of the entry of two trucks without license plates in Banjska. The vehicles were placed on the bridge to prevent passage and entry into the town.
“The police encountered resistance and shot at them from various positions with an arsenal of firearms and hand grenades and a zolja,” the Police explained. One officer died and two more were injured. One of them has undergone surgery to remove the shrapnel.
The Raska-Prizren diocese of The Serbian Orthodox Church has condemned the attack and has denied any relationship with the attackers and has reported that “the monastery community and the faithful of Novi Sad, including Abbot Danilo, are inside.”
“A group of armed and masked individuals broke into the monastery. They broke the doors with an armored vehicle. “Armed and masked individuals move around the monastery and shots are heard sporadically,” he added.
International reaction
KFOR, for its part, has also condemned the attack on the Kosovo police and has stressed that it continues to closely monitor the situation in Banjska.
Meanwhile, Germany has reported that the German Government’s special envoy for the Western Balkans, Manuel Zaracin, is traveling to Kosovo this Sunday.
Also at the diplomatic level The ambassadors in Kosovo from the United States, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom have been mobilized and they have traveled to the headquarters of Prime Minister Kurti, with whom they have met.