The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic. Photo: Getty Images

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Monday that the recent tensions in the Kosovo region were organized by the region's prime minister, Albin Kurti, and are aimed at provoking "a conflict between the Serbs and NATO."

He said 52 Serbs were wounded and three of them were in serious condition as a result of clashes in Kosovo.

Representatives of the Serb minority in the north of the self-proclaimed republic of Kosovo denounced attacks against that community by the NATO mission in that region (KFOR), the local press said today.

Representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is part of KFOR, attacked Serbs stationed in front of an administrative building in the Mitrovica area, the Vecherni Novosti newspaper said.

The Serbs held a peaceful protest in front of an administrative building, occupied since last day 26 by the Kosovar special police, where on Monday KFOR forces arrived and demanded that the demonstrators move away from that building.

Faced with this maneuver, the leader of the Serbian List party, Igor Simich, asked the participants in the protest to hold a sit-in with their hands raised to show the peaceful nature of the demonstration, the newspaper said.

However, the members of the forces of the Atlantic alliance, which were installed in Kosovo in 1999, after the end of the illegitimate bombing of that bloc against the then Yugoslav Federation, attacked Simich and arrested him.

This was followed by at least 30 stun grenades and tear gas fired at protesters, leaving two Serbs injured.

On the day, KFOR forces blocked the passage of Serb citizens to administrative buildings in the northern regions of Zvechan, Leposavic, Zubin-Patok and Kasovska-Mitrovica, who wished to express their ignorance of recent local elections.

The authorities of Kosovo, governed by its majority of ethnic Albanians, decided to hold municipal elections in the north of that region, boycotted by the Serb minority, which led to a meager turnout of just over three percent.

However, Pristina considered these elections valid and set out to place its representatives there, in areas where Serbs are the vast majority.

The publication states that, far from fulfilling their duties as part of KFOR, NATO forces protected the seizure of the aforementioned administrative buildings by the Kosovar police.

In the midst of this situation, Serbian President Alexander Vucic, whose government defends jurisdiction over Kosovo, which it considers its province, put the armed forces on high alert and moved part of them to the border with that region.

(With information from Prensa Latina and RT en Español)

See also

President of Serbia: "We cannot forget NATO's aggression"