High tension in northern Kosovo where during the night a police officer was killed and two others were wounded during a firefight in the village of Banjska. And the violence does not stop.
Accusations against Serbia
“Attacks against our police are still underway”, denounced the Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti, explaining that the attack was the work of “professionals with their faces covered and carrying heavy weapons, around thirty” and that “the group is inside and around a monastery, where the Kosovar patrol was ambushed last night”.
“We condemn this criminal and terrorist attack – continues Kurti – organized crime, with the political, financial and logistical support from official circles in Belgradeis attacking our state”. “The government and institutions of the Republic of Kosovo – he warned – are ready and united in the response to these crimes and these terrorist criminals”. The Serbian Orthodox Church confirmed the raid on the monastery, at inside which are pilgrims and religious people from the Serbian city of Novi Sad. Kurti then invited the attackers “to hand themselves over to our security agencies”.
One of the attackers killed
One of the Serbian attackers responsible for last night’s attack on Kosovar police has been killed, police confirmed after reporting that Serbian militiamen attacked from several positions “with an arsenal of firearms, including hand grenades and missiles on the shoulder”.
“It’s an attack on Kosovo”
“The killing of a policeman and the wounding of another in the north of Kosovo, planned, orchestrated and executed by Serbian criminal gangs, is an attack on law and order in the north of the country. It is an attack on Kosovo”, he denounces in a note from the Kosovar president Vjosa Osmani, according to which “these attacks demonstrate once again the destabilizing power of the criminal gangs organized by Serbia which for a long time now, as demonstrated by the attacks on KFOR members, journalists and citizens, have been destabilizing Kosovo and the entire region”.
“In addition to strongly condemning this open aggression by Serbia against my country, I expect our allies to support Kosovo in its efforts to restore law and order and preserve sovereignty in every part of the Republic,” he said. appeal from the president, who invites “all citizens, institutions and political entities to remain united at this time when the territorial integrity, security and sovereignty of Kosovo is openly challenged”. Osmani, due to the situation created in the north, canceled all the activities planned on Monday and Tuesday in New York and will leave today to return to Kosovo.
Regarding the ongoing clashes, the condemnation of the High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell comes from the EU: “I condemn in the strongest terms the hateful attack by an armed gang against Kosovo police officers in Banjska in the north of Kosovo, which caused the death of one officer and the wounding of two. All the facts relating to the attack must be established. Those responsible must face justice”, he writes in a note underlining how “other innocent lives are at risk in the ongoing hostilities in surroundings of the Banjska monastery. These attacks must stop immediately. EULEX, as a second security force, is on site and in close contact with the authorities and KFOR. The EU and its Member States repeatedly urge all actors to make every effort to de-escalation,” says Borrell.
Foreign Minister against Borrell: “Intolerable cynicism”
“Mr. Borrell, really? Terrorists kill police and you appeal to ‘all actors’? Not even a word of support for the police? Not even against terrorists?” The Kosovar Foreign Minister, Donika Gervalla-Schwarz, wrote this in a post on “Did you also define the terrorist attacks in Spain as ‘hostility’? What a shame – the head of Pristina’s diplomacy continues polemically – How can EU members still tolerate this cynicism?”
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