Serbs and Albanians clash over water pipeline: one injured

The commander of the northern police station in Kosovska Mitrovica Milija Milosevic said that one Serb, Predrag Jevtic (52), had been injured in the fight.

Milosevic confirmed that after the fight, shots had been heard as coming from the direction of the houses inhabited by Albanians, and added that the police had arrested one person of ethnic Albanian nationality.

"The arrested person is a Kosovo Albanian, a driver of excavators, who was working on the site," Milosevic said, adding that strong forces of the Kosovo Police Service, UNMIK police and KFOR had arrived on the scene.

The Serbs in Suvi Do oppose the building of the water pipeline network, which is supposed to run through their farms. 

The same dispute was the reason for the conflict that broke out last week, when the police arrested three Albanians, while KFOR confiscated one automatic rifle during a search of the house of one of the arrested persons.

The Serb National Council (SNV) of the northern part of Kosovo requested UNMIK and KFOR to protect, without delay, Serbs in Suvi Do, near Kosovska Mitrovica, underscoring that they were today, once again, the target of the Albanian attack.

"In this attack against the Serb population by the Albanian extremists, Predrag Jevtic, was seriously injured and he is in the intensive care unit of the Kosovska Mitrovica hospital," the SNV said in a statement signed by its president Milan Ivanovic.            

The SNV also said in the statement that due to frequent, even armed, Albanian attacks against Serbs, UNMIK and KFOR have to set up their check points in Suvi Do, or to announce publicly "that they are not interest in safety of the Serbs and that they call the Serbian army and police to be in charge of the security of the Serb population."

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