According to the Kosovar authorities, the situation is now under control. The police regained control of a monastery in the north of the country on Sunday, where around thirty armed men had taken refuge for several hours. According to authorities, three attackers were killed and several arrests were made.
Earlier, the police said that four civilians had been “arrested in possession of radio communication tools” and that a large number of weapons and ammunition had been seized. The armed men had been holed up since midday in the Banjska monastery, surrounded by police forces.
A group of pilgrims from Novi Sad, Serbia, was inside the building when these masked men “stormed the monastery in an armored vehicle and forced the door,” according to the diocese. Tensions began before dawn, when a Kosovar police officer patrolling near the border with Serbia was killed in an attack on his unit “from different positions with heavy weapons, including grenades”, according to the police. One of his colleagues was injured.
Serbia refuses to recognize the independence of Kosovo
His death triggered immediate reactions from Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, and President, Vjosa Osmani, who pointed the finger at Serbia. Albin Kurti accused “Belgrade officials” of offering logistical and financial support “to organized crime”, and Vjosa Osmani certified that “these attacks prove, if it were still necessary, the destabilizing power of criminal gangs , organized by Serbia.
Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after NATO helped push Serbian forces out of the former province in a bloody war that left around 13,000 people dead. mostly of Albanian origin. Serbia, supported in particular by its Russian and Chinese allies, refuses to recognize the independence of Kosovo, the vast majority of which is of Albanian origin and where a Serbian community of around 120,000 people lives, mainly in the north, including some members refuse all allegiance to Pristina.