Belgrade says ethnic Albanian officers shot up a car and seriously injured a passenger
One ethnic Serb has been hospitalized with a chest wound after ethnic Albanian special police in northern Kosovo opened fire on a civilian vehicle on Monday morning, an official in Belgrade said, protesting the latest attack in the Western-backed breakaway province.
The incident happened around 11:30 local time at a checkpoint between Kosovska Mitrovica and Leposavic, said the Serbian government’s commissioner for Kosovo, Petar Petkovic. He blamed the ethnic Albanian prime minister, Albin Kurti, for the shooting.
“Members of Kurti’s ROSU special forces opened fire on Serbs in a vehicle simply because they refused to be harassed,” Petkovic told reporters in Belgrade. “Kurti’s ROSU has no business in the north of [Kosovo], and this checkpoint was set up illegally to harass the Serbs that use that road daily.”
Miljan Delevic, 37, was transported to the hospital in Kraljevo with injuries. His life is not in danger at the moment, the hospital said. The other man in the car was “miraculously” not injured, according to Petkovic.
Kosovo police said the car had refused to stop at the checkpoint and “struck a police vehicle while moving, directly endangering the lives of police officers,” who opened fire to protect themselves.
The Serb List political party denounced the “brutality of these criminals in uniform” and called it a “continuation of anti-Serb hysteria by the Pristina regime.” Recalling the Christmas Eve attack on Serbs near Strpce, the party quoted the words attributed to US founding statesman Thomas Jefferson: “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”