Over 30 peacekeepers hurt in northern Kosovo clashes

ZVECAN, Kosovo—Over 30 peacekeepers deployed in a NATO-led mission in Kosovo were injured Monday in clashes with Serb protesters who demanded the removal of recently elected ethnic Albanian mayors, as tensions flare in the Balkan nation.

NATO’S Kosovo Force (KFOR) said it had faced “unprovoked attacks” while countering a hostile crowd after demonstrators clashed with police and tried to force their way into a government building in the northern town of Zvecan.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said 52 Serbs were hurt, three seriously, while one was “wounded with two gunshots by (ethnic) Albanian special forces.”

Hungary’s defense minister said on Facebook that “more than 20 Hungarian soldiers” were among the wounded, with seven in serious but stable condition.

Italy’s foreign minister said three of its soldiers were seriously wounded, and the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, joined NATO in calling for “all parties to take a step back to lower tensions”.

Kosovo’s Serbs boycotted last month’s elections in northern towns, which allowed ethnic Albanians to take control of local councils despite a minuscule turnout of under 3.5 percent of voters.

Kosovan Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s government officially installed the mayors last week, defying calls to ease the tensions by the European Union and the United States, which have both championed the territory’s 2008 independence from Serbia.

Many Serbs are demanding the withdrawal of Kosovo police forces—whose presence in northern Kosovo has long sparked resistance—as well as the ethnic Albanian mayors they do not consider their true representatives.

Fractures and burns

Early Monday, groups of Serbs clashed with Kosovo police in front of the municipal building in Serbmajority Zvecan and tried to enter, after which law enforcers responded by firing tear gas, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.

NATO-led peacekeepers in the KFOR mission at first tried to separate protesters from the police, but later started to disperse the crowd using shields and batons, an AFP journalist saw.

Several protesters responded by hurling rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at the soldiers, but were quickly repelled a few hundred meters away from the Zvecan municipal building.

“While countering the most active fringes of the crowd, several soldiers of the Italian and Hungarian KFOR contingent were the subject of unprovoked attacks and sustained trauma wounds with fractures and burns due to the explosion of incendiary devices,” the NATO force said in a statement. AFP