The situation was more than chaotic this Sunday, September 24 in Kosovo. A police officer was killed and around thirty armed men are holed up in a monastery in the north of the country. The government castigates “organized crime supported by officials in Belgrade.” Serbia, for its part, castigates Pristina’s “lies”.
At the end of the afternoon, the situation became calm again in the monastery. “We have regained control of this area, after several battles,” said the Minister of the Interior during a press conference. Since midday, armed men holed up in this monastery were surrounded by police forces. Police had confirmed “the death of three attackers, the arrest of four [civilian] suspects who were arrested in possession of radio communications tools, as well as the identification of a large number of weapons and ammunition.” . Without detailing where or when they were killed.
There were at least thirty professionals, soldiers or armed police officers, explained Albin Kurti, the Kosovar Prime Minister, at midday. “They are not civilians,” he said, showing journalists images of the men and military vehicles present in the courtyard of the monastery, presented as that of Banjska.
By law, Kosovar authorities cannot exercise power in Orthodox churches and monasteries without agreement from the Church – except in emergencies, such as during a fire or after an earthquake.
KFOR, NATO’s peacekeeping force in Kosovo, was “present and ready to intervene if asked”, according to its latest statement, in the middle of the afternoon, which specified that the Kosovar police are responsible of managing the situation. A local police official confirmed that the exchanges of fire are continuing: “We can see armed men in uniform. They shoot at us and we shoot back. »
According to the diocese, “a group of pilgrims from South Niv [in Serbia, Editor’s note] with an abbot” were in the monastery. For their safety, they locked themselves inside after masked men “stormed the Banjska monastery in an armored vehicle, and forced the door.”
The outbreak of violence began early Sunday when a police officer was killed while patrolling near the border with Serbia. He was heading near a road reported blocked when his unit “was attacked from different positions with heavy weapons, including grenades,” according to police. One of his colleagues was injured. Albin Kurti immediately denounced a “criminal and terrorist” attack, and accused “officials in Belgrade” of offering logistical and financial support “to organized crime”.
“It’s an attack on Kosovo,” added President Vjosa Osmani. “These attacks prove, if proof were still needed, the destabilizing power of criminal gangs, organized by Serbia, which have been destabilizing Kosovo and the region for a long time,” she wrote in a statement,
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that he would speak in the afternoon to “debunk all the lies and conspiracy theories of Albin Kurti, who only creates chaos and hell” in Kosovo.
The EU condemns in the strongest possible terms the hideous attack against Kosovo Police officers in Banjska/Banjskë in the north of Kosovo. The responsible perpetrators must face justice. https://t.co/AU79eVg5Ix
Since the Kosovo War, a conflict which left 13,000 dead, mostly Kosovar Albanians, relations between the two former enemies have experienced crisis after crisis. Serbia, supported in particular by its Russian and Chinese allies, refuses to recognize the independence of its former province, whose population of 1.8 million inhabitants, overwhelmingly of Albanian origin, includes a Serbian community of around 120 000 people, who live mainly in the north of Kosovo.
This region is thus the scene of recurring violence, the latest dating back to the spring, when the Kosovar authorities decided to appoint Albanian mayors in four municipalities with a Serbian majority. It sparked one of the worst episodes in years, with protests, Serbia’s arrest of three Kosovar police officers and a violent riot by Serbian protesters that left more than 30 peacekeepers injured NATO.
But the latest attempts at discussions between the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, and the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic, failed in mid-September after barely a few hours. Serbia wishes, as a prerequisite for any discussion, to obtain a form of association of Serbian communities in the North, while the Kosovar side has as a prerequisite the recognition by Belgrade of the independence of Kosovo.
