Kosovan Serbs stone Irish UN troops

Irish soldiers serving with the UN-led KFOR peacekeeping mission came under attack from a stone-throwing crowd of Serbs at a village about 10 km from the Kosovo capital, Pristina, yesterday.

The troops had been drafted into the area as back-up for Swedish soldiers who came under sustained attack late on Monday from a large crowd of Kosovan Serbs. The crowd was protesting at the shooting dead of a local teenager.

The Irish troops, based at Lipljan 10 km south of Pristina, were drafted in to assist their Swedish colleagues at their Camp Victoria base 25 km away. As the troops drove their vehicles they were stoned yesterday afternoon by a section of the crowd which had remained in the area since Monday's disturbance.

The crowd attempted to block the way of the Irish vehicles. They wanted the reinstatement of recently removed UN checkpoints in the area and were also demanding the capture of the gunmen who killed 18-year-old Jovica Ivic. The Serbs blamed that attack on gunmen from Kosovo's Albanian majority.

While no shots were fired during the attack on the Irish cavalcade some of the vehicles were damaged. The situation was described last night as "calm but very tense" by a UN police spokesman.

He said police at the scene tried to persuade the Serbs to lift blockades of two key roads, one leading south to Macedonia, but they had not been successful.

At least one civilian vehicle was hijacked yesterday when the ethnic Albanian occupants were ordered out of it before it was set alight.

Additional reporting Reuters