The worst ethnic violence in Kosovo since the end of the 1999 conflict erupted in the partitioned town of Kosovska Mitrovica this week, leaving hundreds wounded and at least six people dead as United Nations peacekeepers and Nato troops scrambled to defuse a raging gun battle between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
UN jeeps were set ablaze and armoured cars destroyed by stoning as furious Albanians stormed the Serbian half of the divided town after the bodies of two Albanian children were recovered from the river Ibar.
Reports from hospitals in the region said about 300 people had been wounded while at least four Albanians and two Serbs had been shot dead.
About a dozen French peacekeepers were injured, two seriously, a UN spokesperson said.
The sudden eruption of violence was fuelled by tit-for-tat incidents in recent days and showed how tense Kosovo remains despite almost five years of UN peacekeeping. With Albanian hardliners in the ascendant and a new nationalist government in power in Serbia, the portents are dismal.
Clashes were also reported in three other areas, with Albanians reportedly torching Serb homes and UN police struggling to separate the two sides. ”This is a very dangerous situation. This is very large scale,” a UN police spokesperson said.
The fighting on Wednesday was triggered by the recovery of the bodies of two Albanian children from the Ibar, which runs through Mitrovica. They had drowned after reportedly jumping into the river to escape Serbian youths who were chasing them with a dog.
The recovery of the bodies of the children electrified Albanians, who marched on Mitrovica, a Serbian enclave north of the Kosovo capital, Pristina, and sought to storm the UN-patrolled bridge crossings into the Serbian area.
The Serbian community, meanwhile, was already in a state of agitation after the wounding of a Serbian youth in a drive-by shooting, apparently by an Albanian. On Tuesday angry Serbs blocked main roads in the province.
Polish troops and French police used teargas and rubber bullets to try to disperse the crowds in Mitrovica. Gunmen on both sides used automatic weapons and grenades.
Two Serbs and four Albanians were reported dead on Wednesday night.
The trouble comes amid spiralling rhetoric despite recent and rare negotiations between Serbs and Albanians on social and economic issues aimed at building a dialogue.
Extreme nationalists determined to keep Kosovo part of Serbia were victorious in recent Serbian elections but were unable to form a government. The new government, under the more moderate nationalist, Vojislav Kostunica, tacitly supported by members of the former Slobodan Milosevic regime, has in effect called for the ethnic partition of Kosovo, prompting Albanian hardliners from the KLA, the former guerrilla force, to talk of forming military units to resist the campaign.
Kostunica came into office a fortnight ago calling for the ”cantonisation” of Kosovo, a codeword for ethnic partition. The notion was dismissed by Harri Holkeri, the UN’s Finnish governor of the province.
”The partition of Kosovo is not an issue we can discuss,” he said.
The Serbian prime minister has since changed his language to emphasise ”decentralisation”. — Â