Serb protesters block main roads in northern Kosovo for a second consecutive day after nightly gun battles with police. EULEX, the EU mission tasked with patrolling northern Kosovo, said a so-called stun grenade was thrown at one of its armored vehicles on Saturday night, but no one was injured. Such a grenade causes a deafening bang and a bright flash of light.
Hundreds of Serbs, outraged by the arrest of a former police officer, once again gathered Sunday morning at roadblocks set up on Saturday that paralyzed traffic through two border crossings from Kosovo to Serbia. Hours after the barricades were raised, police were said to have been shot at three consecutive times with firearms on one of the roads leading to the border and “had to return fire in self-defence”, police said.
Many ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo, a hotbed of Serbian nationalism, view the Kosovo government in Pristina as anti-Serb. Although Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, Belgrade does not recognize this and encourages the Serb minority in northern Kosovo to defy Pristina’s authority. Serbs make up about 120,000 of Kosovo’s approximately 1.8 million inhabitants, who are ethnically predominantly Albanian.
Tensions in northern Kosovo escalated after Pristina scheduled local elections for 18 December in Serb-majority municipalities. The main Serbian political party then said it would organize a boycott. When Kosovar election authorities tried to prepare for the vote earlier this week, there were explosions and shootings in the region. An ethnic Albanian police officer was injured in the incident.
Shortly after the appearance of the roadblocks, Kosovo’s president, Vjosa Osmani, decided to postpone the elections to April 23. Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti accuses Serbia of “threatening Kosovo with aggression. We don’t want conflict, we want peace and progress, but we will respond to aggression with all our might,” Kurti warns on Facebook.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic convened the National Security Council on Sunday evening, Serbian public broadcaster N1 reported. Vucic also said he will ask NATO peacekeepers to allow the deployment of the Serbian army in Kosovo. NATO has deployed a peacekeeping mission of 4,000 men in Kosovo under the mandate of the UN Security Council.
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