The UN ordered its police to pull out of a Serb-dominated town in northern Kosovo today after troops and officers were injured in a riot by hundreds of nationalists opposed to the country’s independence.

The withdrawal order was given after an UN-Nato operation to evict a Mitrovica courthouse occupied by 300 demonstrators turned violent, leading to full-scale rioting across the city.

Three policemen serving with the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and two Nato soldiers were injured when a grenade was launched from inside the building. A mob of several hundred gathered outside and threw stones, grenades and fired automatic weapons, injuring 22 Polish UN police and eight French Nato troops.

As a group of 53 Serbs was loaded into UN police vans outside the court, the Serbian protesters attacked troops again, with reports suggesting that at least one UN van and one Nato lorry had been seized, set on fire, and the detainees freed.

"Police . . . handcuffed us, searched the offices and put us in a police van," Dragoljub Drazevic, one of the protesters freed from the vehicle, told the AFP news agency. "When we were coming out of the compound, the van I was in was stopped by Serbs who trashed it and freed us." He and another five detainees had fled the scene, he said.

As rioting continued, reportedly killing one protester, the UN issued a statement saying that a decision had been made to withdraw police from Mitrovica, the biggest city in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, although it did not elaborate on how quickly the operation would take place. Nato troops were remaining in the city, meanwhile, to restore order.

"An order has been given for UNMIK police to withdraw from the north because of ongoing violent riots," a spokesman told Reuters in Pristina, the Kosovan capital.

During the riots that followed the courthouse operation, the Polish Government announced that 22 of its police officers had been injured. A total of 115 Polish police officers are serving in Kosovo.

"Their lives are not in danger, but some of them were unable to get back into their vehicle unaided," Mariusz Sokolowski, Poland's national policing spokesman said. "They have been taken to the nearest French military hospital."

France later announced that its soldiers had been injured. "Eight French KFOR soldiers are injured with grenades, stones and molotov cocktails," said a spokesman, Etienne du Fayet de la Tour. Their wounds were not life-threatening, he said. KFOR is the UN-mandated Nato peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister defended the peacekeepers’ action, and demanded that they did not end their operation.

"We have requested from the first day that UN and KFOR establish the rule of law in north Mitrovica and to protect institutions there. It was a just action and the right one," Hajredin Kuqi said. "There can be no compromise when it comes to the rule of law."

The nationalists took control of the courthouse on Friday in order to prevent ethnic Albanian judges returning to work there after Kosovan independence. The UN had run the court since 1999, after Nato's operation in the Balkans.

During earlier protests outside the court, UN and local staff had been forced to leave after rioters hit the building with several small hand grenade explosions.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on February 17 and has since been recognised by many Western countries. Serbia and Kosovo's Serbs, however, vehemently reject the move.

In a campaign of civil disobedience that has followed the announcement, Serb nationalists have tried to take control of a stretch of train line in northern Kosovo, in defiance of the Kosovo Government. Hundreds of ethnic Serb policemen have also handed over their badges and weapons rather than submit to Kosovo authorities.

They have also torched two border crossings with Serbia and have since staged a series of other protests, some of which have turned unruly. Western embassies in Belgrade were also torched by mobs.

Fears of violence have forced staff preparing for an EU-led international mission set up to assist the move to independence to leave the north.

Half of the city of Mitrovica, north of the river Ibar and the mineral-rich region around it, is home to 40,000 Serbs who insist that they do not wish to live in an independent, mainly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo.

Along with a further 80,000 Serbs living in enclaves surrounded by Albanian communities south of the Ibar, and the Serbian Government in Belgrade, they have refused to accept the territory’s independence declaration.

In a statement this afternoon, the British Foreign Office urged Kosovan Serbs to express their concerns through dialogue and not violence.

“We condemn totally these violent actions directed against UN and Nato personnel and aimed at preventing them from carrying out their work,” a spokeswoman said.

“We recognise how difficult Kosovo independence is for Serbia and Kosovo’s Serbs. We urge the Kosovo Serb Community to engage with the UN special envoy’s comprehensive settlement and address their genuine concerns through political dialogue.”

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