(Mitrovica) Hundreds of Kosovo Serbs erected barricades on a road in the north of the country on Saturday, blocking traffic at two major border crossings with Serbia, police said.
Trucks, ambulances and agricultural machinery have been set up to block traffic, amid tensions marked in recent days by explosions, shootings and an attack targeting a police patrol. A Kosovar Albanian policeman was injured in this attack.
According to local media, protesters from Kosovo’s Serb minority are outraged by the arrest of a former policeman of Serb ethnicity suspected of involvement in attacks on Kosovo police.
Emergency sirens sounded in several Serb-majority towns in northern Kosovo to kick off the organized movement on Saturday, according to an AFP journalist.
Protesters told AFP that they wanted to prevent “the transfer to Pristina” of the arrested former policeman.
Kosovar Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said the arrested ex-policeman was one of two suspects apprehended after the attacks on police patrols over the past two days.
The latest tensions erupted after the decision by the Kosovo authorities to organize local elections on 18 December in municipalities with a Serb majority which the main Serbian political parties have announced that they want to boycott.
Explosions and gunfire were heard on Thursday as election officials visited two municipalities in northern Kosovo to prepare for the polls, but no injuries were reported.
Shortly after the barricades were erected, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani announced that she had decided to postpone local elections to April 23.
The attack in which the policeman was injured on Thursday took place after the deployment in northern Kosovo of Kosovar Albanian policemen. According to the government, this deployment was decided after the collective resignation of Serbs working in public institutions, including the police. Serbian members of the security forces and civil servants had resigned in protest against the decision of the Kosovo authorities to replace the license plates issued by Belgrade with those issued by Pristina.
Serb demonstrators had blocked traffic in September at the two main border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia, to express their anger over the license plates.
The Serb minority in Kosovo, which totals around 120,000 members, refuses its loyalty to Pristina with the encouragement of Belgrade, which does not recognize the independence of Kosovo proclaimed in 2008.