UN police quit Kosovo city after 30 peacekeepers wounded

By Dimitar Dilkoff
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 19:01:00 03/17/2008


KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- UN police were forced to withdraw Monday from the Serbian half of this Kosovo town after coming under attack as they stormed a courthouse occupied by Serbs opposed to independence.

More than 20 UN police and at least eight NATO peacekeepers were wounded in grenade and gun attacks after they moved in to regain control of a UN-run tribunal that had been occupied since Friday by protesters.

Kosovo police spokesman Beshim Hoti said an explosion erupted as UN police moved in to arrest more than 50 Serbs who had been occupying the building in protest at Kosovo's month-old declaration of independence.

"I suppose it was a hand grenade activated in the courthouse yard," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) from the capital Pristina. Another police spokesman, Veton Elshani, said 25 UN police had been injured.

Machinegun fire was later heard and at least one member of the international security forces was shot, a witness said, leading to an order for UN forces to withdraw from the Serb-populated northern half of the ethnically divided town.

"The police are pulling out of northern Mitrovica," said an official from the Kosovo police mission of the United Nations, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.

At least 22 of the wounded UN police were Polish, Poland's national police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski said in Warsaw.

"Their lives are not in danger, but some of them were unable to get back into their vehicle unaided," he said, adding they had been pelted with rocks, homemade explosives and had possibly been shot at.

"They have been taken to the nearest French military hospital," he added.

The use of weapons makes the violence the worst to have erupted in Kosovo since its ethnic Albanian-dominated parliament unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on February 17.

It erupted after Kosovo's UN police force and troops from NATO's KFOR peacekeeping force surrounded the Mitrovica courthouse at about 5:30 am (0430 GMT) and began evicting the Serb protestors.

Fifty-three of the Serbs were arrested, Elshani told AFP.

A group of some 300 Serbs opposed to Kosovo's independence stormed the UN-run courthouse on Friday. Negotiations with United Nations officials failed over the weekend, and the Serbs refused to leave the premises.

The demonstrators -- many of whom worked in Kosovo's judiciary before the territory came under the administration of the United Nations in 1999 -- said they wanted to set up their own court.

Kosovo's independence has been recognized by many Western countries but Serbia and Kosovo Serbs -- backed by Russia -- have vehemently rejected the move as illegal.

As the UN police arrived to surround the building about a hundred angry Serbs gathered and pelted the security forces with stones. Police used tear gas to disperse them, but two UN vehicles were damaged.

Serb protestors managed to seize to least one of the UN police vehicles and free some of the detainees.

Dragoljub Drazevic, one of the freed protestors who was in the vehicle, told AFP: "Police stormed into the building this morning around 5:20 a.m. (0420 GMT). They handcuffed us, searched the offices and put us in a police van.

"When we were coming out of the compound, the van I was in was stopped by Serbs who trashed it and freed us," Drazevic said, adding that he and another five detainees had fled the scene.

Protesters had earlier said they would stay in the courthouse until after a meeting between UN officials and representatives of the Serbian government that had been expected to take place later on Monday.

However, it was unclear whether the meeting between UN mission chief Joachim Rucker and Serb Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic would take place