WASHINGTON: Ethnic Serbs gathered again in north Kosovo, a flashpoint town, on Thursday at the site of clashes that occurred earlier this week with NATO-led troops, as Washington urged both Pristina and Belgrade diffuse tensions.
In the northern town of Zvecan, nearly 70 protesters — considerably fewer than crowds seen on past days – took a rally outside the town hall, closed with barbed wire and encircled by NATO-led peacekeepers in full riot gear.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Belgrade and Pristina to ease tensions, warning they were risking European integration aspirations.
At NATO talks in Oslo, Blinken told journalists that the United States urged the governments of Serbia and Kosovo to take immediate measures to de-escalate tensions.
Attack in Serb-populated area
Kosovo police said that 2 ethnic Albanian men were wounded in an attack near a square in the Serb-populated area of the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica.
It said that the victims were attacked by a criminal group that was masked and organized for the attack. The injured were shifted to the hospital.
In Zvecan, a KFOR armored car was parked near the road leading to the town hall, a step requested on Wednesday by a local Serb party following hooded protesters smashed windows on 2 Kosovo police vehicles in the town centre, wounding an officer.
On Monday, NATO-led peacekeeper officers armed with batons and shields clashed with protesters throwing bottles, rocks, and Molotov cocktails. 30 peacekeepers and over 50 demonstrators were wounded.
Hundreds of people rallied in Mitrovica’s ethnic-Albanian-populated southern area, but they dispersed after half an hour despite announcements of going towards the Serb neighborhood.
They carried Albanian flags and chanted the slogan, “Mitrovica cannot be divided,” while police blocked the road leading to the bridge separating the northern and southern parts of the city.
