A UN police officer has died from injuries sustained in the worst violence in Kosovo since it declared independence last month.
The Ukrainian officer was one of hundreds of riot police, backed by Nato helicopters and armoured vehicles, deployed in the Serb-dominated north of the Albanian-majority province.
Police used grenades and teargas to restore control of a court building occupied by Serb activists last week in the town of Mitrovica. Rioters threw rocks, grenades and Molotov cocktails and used automatic weapons against Nato troops.
More than 60 UN and Nato forces and 70 protesters were wounded, and a police spokesman said an officer died in a military hospital after suffering unspecified injuries yesterday.
The court at the centre of the violence has been run by the UN since Kosovo became an international protectorate at the end of the Nato-Serbia war over Kosovo in 1999.
Some 40,000 Serbs of Mitrovica are militantly opposed to Kosovo's independence and, backed by Belgrade, are bent on partitioning Kosovo and taking over the police and justice institutions in the north.
Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...kosovo.serbia1
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