Video: Serbs attack convoy in Mitrovica

A United Nations police officer has died of injuries sustained in a day of rioting by Serbs in Kosovo as Nato troops tried to calm the worst violence since the country's unilateral declaration of independence.

The officer, a Ukrainian, was killed as he and his colleagues battled to control street rioting in the Serb-dominated north of the city of Mitrovica. The riots - which came after a dawn raid by police and Nato troops to force Serb nationalist protesters to end a three-day occupation of two UN-run courthouses - led to more than 150 people being wounded, 63 of whom were UN police.

Amid international condemnation of the rioting, the UN said it would pull its officers out of north Mitrovica. Nato's Kfor troops will remain in the town in a bid to secure calm.

Announcing the officer's death, Kosovo police spokesman Veton Elshani, said: "A Ukrainian police officer died on Monday evening of wounds suffered during violent demonstrations in the north of Kosovska Mitrovica." He is believed to have died either in a grenade attack or by gunshot. Demonstrators also threw stones at troops trying to end the occupation.

The rioting erupted after police arrested about 50 Serbs who had been occupying the two court buildings since Friday, attempting as they did so to stop their Albanian and UN employees from going to work.

As officers took the arrested men outside and tried to put them in UN vans, hundreds of residents from the Serb-populated northern part of the town attacked the security force’s convoy and managed to free some of the prisoners. Many UN vehicles were vandalised or set on fire.

In Bosnjacka Mahala, an Albanian-populated part of northern Mitrovica, French Kfor troops were reported to have responded with a stun bomb to frighten off a group of Serbs after they stoned their passing convoy.

Kosovo’s Albanian-majority parliament unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on February 17, causing tensions in the north where the Ibar River splits Serbs in the north from ethnic Albanians in the south.

Serbs in the capital Belgrade and in Kosovo's Serbian areas have mounted a campaign of civil unrest since then aimed at stopping the fledgling Kosovan administration from running the country. This included taking control of a railway line in northern Kosovo and repeatedly attacking the two courthouses. In Belgrade, the US, UK and other embassies were also attacked by mobs.

Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, led the international condemnation of yesterday’s violence in Mitrovica, urging "all communities to exercise calm and restraint".

However, bitter differences over Kosovo’s independence intensified between the United States and Russia. "The United States condemns the violence against UN and Nato personnel near the UN courthouse in Mitrovica," Tom Casey, a US State Department spokesman, said, while also calling on Belgrade to act to reduce tensions.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, meanwhile urged Middle Eastern states not to recognise Kosovo’s independence, giving warning that this could encourage other breakaway regions. "Efforts continue to be made in Kosovo to force people to live in a state created illegally," he said, in an interview published today in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper. "Disorder has also begun in other countries. You can see what’s happening in the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet."

Boris Tadic, the Serbian President, warned the UN and Nato forces against any "excessive reaction" that could spark a further "escalation". Vojislav Kostunica, the outgoing Prime Minister, condemned the "use of force" and said that Serbia had "begun consultations with Russia over necessary mutual reaction in order to halt all violence against the Serbs".

Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's Prime Minister, accused Belgrade of "inspiring violence", saying it was "regretful that the Serbian Government has not learnt any lesson from the past".

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