Six Kosovo Serbs and four members of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping mission were injured in clashes at the Jarinje border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia on Tuesday afternoon, media in Belgrade and Pristina said.
The clashes broke out shortly after 1300 hours when, according to KFOR, peacekeepers responded in self defence, firing rubber bullets at Serb demonstrators who were throwing stones at them.
According to Belgrade media, six injured Serbs received medical attention in Kosovska Mitrovica. The head of the town hospital, Milan Jakovljevic, was quoted as saying that the six people had been admitted with gunshot wounds inflicted by live ammunition.
KFOR spokesman Kai Gudenoge said that Serbs had been throwing stones at KFOR German troops, and after one soldier was hit, the peacekeepers were forced to fire rubber bullets in self-defence.
Albanian-language media in Pristina quoted Gudenoge as saying that four KFOR troops had been injured in the clashes, including one seriously. Gudenoge said that gunshots had been heard from the crowd of Serbs, but the attacker was not identified.
The Serbian Minister for Kosovo, Goran Bogdanovic, told the Serbian news agency Beta that it was "totally unacceptable" that the KFOR personnel had fired on the unarmed people at the barricades. He said that KFOR did not have the right to shoot at unarmed people and put people's lives in danger "for the sake of someone's personal interests or the interests of some groups in Pristina."
On Tuesday morning, KFOR troops closed a road near the Jarinje border crossing and, using tear gas, removed a barricade that had been manned by local Serbs over the past few days. Several Serb protesters were arrested.
