2023-09-29 19:34:25
NATO has decided to send additional troops to northern Kosovo following violent clashes pitting the police once morest Serbian paramilitaries, the organization said on Friday in Brussels. The Alliance did not specify the number of soldiers who will be deployed, but according to information from the German news agency DPA, the reinforcements will come from the United Kingdom.
On Sunday, around thirty Serbian paramilitaries entered northern Kosovo. At least three of them and a Kosovar police officer were killed during clashes. Pristina accuses Belgrade of having trained, equipped, financed and sent the commando to Kosovo to destabilize the country. Serbia, for its part, rejects these accusations. Since the war, which ended in 1999 with NATO bombings, relations between Pristina and Belgrade have gone from crisis to crisis.
Serbia refuses to recognize the independence proclaimed in 2008 by its former province, whose population of 1.8 million inhabitants, overwhelmingly of Albanian origin, includes a Serbian community of around 120,000 people, who live mainly in northern Kosovo. Some 4,500 soldiers from 27 NATO member states and partners are currently in the country.
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