NATO boosts troops as Kosovo ignites

NATO sent US and Italian reinforcements to Kosovo yesterday after fighting between Serbs and ethnic Albanians killed 22 people and wounded hundreds, the worst violence since the war five years ago.

Attackers burned several Serb houses and an Orthodox Christian church on Thursday in Obilic, an ethnically mixed town west of Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. UN police and NATO troops evacuated dozens of Serbs.

The Kosovo clashes triggered fighting in the neighbouring province of Serbia, where nationalists burned mosques and threatened Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians with “slaughter” and “death”.