Kosovo authorities declared Monday a day of national mourning after a group of armed men occupied a Serbian Orthodox monastery on Sunday. International news agencies reported this on Monday. An Albanian-Kosovar police officer was killed in the violence in the northern village of Banjska. Three of the attackers were also killed: they were killed by police.
The attack began early Sunday morning when a group of armed men opened fire on a police patrol in Banjska, located about 55 kilometers north of the capital Pristina. Police officer Afrim Bunjaku was killed and another officer was injured. After the attack, the group entered the village’s monastery.
The shelling went back and forth all day: the attackers barricaded themselves in the monastery while the Kosovo police tried to overpower them from outside. When it got dark, the attackers left the monastery on foot. In addition to the three men the police killed during the escape, two were injured. It is not clear whether the other attackers have gotten away or are still in the vicinity of the village. The police have carried out house searches and are not yet allowing journalists into Banjska.
Riot
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti accuses Serbia of sending armed men into Kosovo to undermine the authorities. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić denies this: he says that Kurti causes violence by refusing to give more autonomy to Sevian Kosovars and by regularly organizing police actions in northern Kosovo.
Kosovo is a former province of Serbia. In 2008, the region unilaterally declared independence. In Kosovo, the large majority of the population is ethnic Albanian: there was a strong call among that group for separation from Serbia. But such people live in the north of Kosovo 50,000 ethnic Serbs, whom the Kosovo authorities often do not recognize.
This division has caused a lot of tension in recent years in Eastern European Kosovo, which has around two million inhabitants. In May, riots broke out in the northern town of Zveçan, near the Serbian border, between Serbian demonstrators and the Kosovo police. The Netherlands recognizes Kosovo as an independent country, as do approximately half of the 193 member states of the United Nations.
Also read: What the Serbs in North Kosovo are angry about and four other questions about the escalating violence