Persistent ethnic tensions in northern Kosovo could trigger a repeat of the violence seen in the region last year, when four people were killed in a shootout and NATO peacekeepers were wounded in clashes, a senior official from the military alliance said, according to Reuters.
Kosovo is populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, but some 50,000 Serbs in the north reject the government in Pristina and see Belgrade as their capital.
A former Serbian province, Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a decade after a guerrilla uprising.
US Navy Admiral Stuart B. Munsch, commander of the Joint Forces Command in Naples, which oversees NATO peacekeeping in Kosovo, said the alliance remained concerned about the risk of renewed violence in the volatile north.
“Heated political rhetoric may inspire some non-governmental forces to commit violence, like what happened last year,” Munsch told reporters in Pristina. “I wouldn’t say that conflict is definitely coming, I think there is a constant risk,” he said, referring to the lack of progress in EU-brokered talks between the Kosovo government and Serbia.
A police officer and three gunmen were killed in September 2023 when a group of heavily armed assailants entered from Serbia and attacked police in the village of Banska.
dnes.bg
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