MORNING STAR ONLINE
KOSOVO’S prime minister said today that a police officer was killed and another wounded in an attack he blamed on support from neighbouring Serbia, increasing tensions at a delicate moment in their European Union-facilitated dialogue to normalise ties.
Prime Minister Albin Kurti said “masked professionals armed with heavy weapons” opened fire on a police patrol in the village of Banjska, Leposavic, 35 miles north of the capital Pristina at 3am, killing one officer. Another officer was injured, but his condition is not life-threatening.
Kosovo police said two trucks with no licence plates had blocked a bridge at the entrance of the village. Three police units were sent to unblock it but came under fire from different positions with different weapons, hand grenades and bombs.
Police managed to push back the attack and take two injured police officers to the hospital in southern Mitrovica.
One of them was dead on arrival, doctors said.
The area around Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, is where most of the country’s ethnic Serb minority lives, in four municipalities.
Reports in the media in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo said residents of the village of Banjska were woken up by shootings and detonations in the middle of the night until dawn.
“It was a real little war: first some gunfire, then silence, shootings, detonations,” Serbian Kossev news agency quoted an unidentified resident as saying.
Serbian media said both local roads and crossings with Serbia were blocked.
“Organised crime, which is politically, financially and logistically supported from Belgrade, is attacking our state,” Mr Kurti wrote on his Facebook page.
Mr Kurti said that gunfire against police with different weapons was ongoing.
