Nato warns it will get tough with Kosovo rioters

Nato deployed more peacekeeping troops to regain control of Kosovo today and warned it was prepared to take harsh measures against rioters as ethnic violence raged into a third day.

In the Serb village of Svinjare just north of the provincial capital, Pristina, smoke billowed from houses set ablaze by arsonists mounting fresh attacks in the worst unrest since Kosovo’s war ended in 1999.

UN police described the overall situation as calmer than yesterday, when ethnic Albanians set Serb homes and at least 15 churches on fire. At least 31 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in clashes that have rocked every major city in the province.

In revenge, Serbian nationalists set mosques elsewhere on fire and threatened to retaliate with “slaughter and death,” even as Nato sent reinforcements to ease the threat of renewed conflict in the volatile Balkans.

The continuing violence underscored the divisions that have polarised Kosovo’s mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians, who want independence from Serbia, and Orthodox Christian Serbs, a minority in Kosovo who consider the province their ancient homeland.

French Nato peacekeepers searched three high-rise apartment buildings inhabited by ethnic Albanian families in the volatile city of Kosovska Mitrovica today. They were trying to find gunmen who were believed to have opened sniper fire overnight from the buildings.

“The situation is calm but very volatile, very fragile and could escalate any minute,” said Lieutenant Mathieu Mabin, spokesman for the French troops.

He said his troops “were forced to use arms against armed and dangerous individuals and we will continue to do so in the future.”

Orthodox leaders said the 14th-century Serbian monastery of Devic in Kosovo’s central Drenica region had been looted and burned. French peacekeepers evacuated its nuns last night and no one was injured.

Citing reports by UN peacekeepers, Human Rights Watch warned on Friday that “most of the violence is being directed at the ethnic Serb minority” and called for their protection.

Stung by the lawlessness that has left Serb enclaves in Kosovo in ruins, peacekeepers promised to respond to provocations with a level of force not used here in the past.

Some peacekeepers were already carrying out the orders, shooting and wounding protesters who used violence in clashes Thursday, said Colonel Horst Pieper, the chief Nato spokesman in Kosovo. The number of injured peacekeepers rose to 51 since clashes began Wednesday.

Kosovo’s crisis erupted on Wednesday, when ethnic Albanians blamed Serbs for the drowning of two children and began rampaging in revenge.

The ensuing violence reignited long simmering tensions between Serbs and ethnic Albanians that have spilled beyond Kosovo’s borders into the Serbian heartland.

The United Nations and Nato, which was bolstering its 18,500 member peacekeeping force with reinforcements from Britain, Germany, France, Italy and the United States, urged restraint in Kosovo and elsewhere in the turbulent region.

“Don’t forget the Balkans. We have learned – or we had to learn it yesterday again – how sensitive the situation is there,” German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said.