Rampage in Serb enclave was "Albanian terrorism" - official

Rampage in Serb enclave was "Albanian terrorism" - official

The incidents happened at around at 03:00 CET on Monday morning, when "unknown persons of Albanian ethnicity" carried out several armed attacks.

Beta reported that the extremists demolished a memorial dedicated to the victims of NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbia, fired shots at the house owned by Sasa Petrovic, and set on fire a car owned by Srboljub Kolasinac and a newsstand of the Vukasinovic family.

"This terrorist act is another reminder that situation in which Serbs live in our southern province is far from normal and far from the standards that exist in societies whose ambition is to become part of the European Union," Djuric said in the statement.

He added that the unambiguous goal of the attacks was to intimidate the Serb population in Kosovo and Metohija in order to force them to leave, and that the incident he qualified as "the Crystal Night in Gorazdevac" had all the hallmarks of terrorism.

"I am convinced that the vast majority of (ethnic) Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija do not want an escalation of violence in their environment, while the provisional institutions of self-government in Pristina now have the opportunity to demonstrate their maturity by finding the perpetrators of these mindless and unprovoked terrorist acts," Djuric said.

He appealed on the international community to react with the utmost seriousness in order to avoid further endangering of the safety of Serbs and degradation of the fragile stability in Kosovo and Metohija.

"This is a warning to everyone about how prone to destabilization the security situation in Kosovo and Metohija is, and what consequences may come from inadequately responding to political extremism of the opposition in Pristina, whose chauvinist rhetoric and actions have made potential targets out of all non-Albanians in our southern province," said Djuric .