Six people suspected of involvement in the death of a police officer in Kosovo on Sunday are now in Serbia, Kosovo’s Interior Minister said on Monday, adding that “the terrorists are injured and are being treated in hospital.”
Kosovo Minister Xhelal Sveçla called on Serbia “to immediately transfer them to the Kosovo authorities so that they can be tried.”
The death of a police officer in Kosovo, as well as the wounding of another officer, occurred during an attack that occurred early Sunday morning in northern Kosovo.
According to the Kosovo Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, it was a terrorist attack, whose attackers were masked professionals carrying heavy weapons.
The death of three members of the armed group was also reported on Sunday, but this Monday the Kosovo authorities raised the death toll from four to five, after discovering the body of another alleged attacker.
The information was confirmed to the Koha Ditore newspaper by the prosecutor of the northern region of Kosovo, Naim Abazi, who explained that the body was found 1.5 kilometers from the scene of the incident by agents who returned today to examine the area.
“We are trying to identify him because there was no document with the remains,” Abazi said.
The confrontation took place at the entrance to the Serbian town of Banjska, in the northern region of Kosovo, inhabited mainly by Serbs, where 30 attackers, supposedly Serbs or Kosovo Serbs, attacked the police.
The inhabitants of that town remained in their homes this Monday in compliance with an order from the authorities, which will remain in force while investigators continue their investigations at the site.
The police, who arrested six people on Sunday, continued to inspect the place on Monday in search of weapons and the remaining attackers.
“We don’t know where they are, we are looking for them everywhere, also in the forest, we don’t know for sure how they got out of the monastery,” which was surrounded by law enforcement officers, said the deputy commander of the police of the northern region of Kosovo, Veton. Elshani.
“We need to check the entire place. We have already found grenades, mortars and all that is risky. We have to check everything thoroughly before normalizing circulation” in the area, he explained.
According to the Serbian press, the city, with about 500 inhabitants, is still surrounded by police and armored vehicles.
Sunday’s clash strained already difficult relations between Pristina and Belgrade.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti accused the Serbian government of supporting the attackers, calling them “terrorists”, accusations that Serbian President Aleksander Vucic rejected, blaming Pristina for the “oppression and mistreatment” of the Serbian minority in Kosovo.
The President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, today declared national mourning in honor of the deceased police officer, to whom he awarded the posthumous “Hero of Kosovo” award, in an event held today in Pristina and in which Kurti attacked Belgrade once again. .
For his part, Vucic today conveyed to Russia, through its ambassador in Belgrade, that “a part of the international community” is supporting an alleged “brutal ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, as argued by the president himself on the social network Instagram.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov considered the current situation “potentially dangerous,” although he admitted to the Russian press that Moscow did not have enough information to comment on the events.
Like Belgrade, Moscow, a traditional close ally of Serbia, does not recognize Kosovo’s self-proclaimed independence in 2008.
The United States was also concerned about the situation: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken strongly condemned Sunday’s “violent and coordinated attacks” against Kosovo police and called on Belgrade and Pristina to calm things down.
Source: TSF
