Two vehicles of U.N. mission were damaged in an explosion near a U.N.-administrative court and the police station in northern Kosovo, police said Friday.
The NATO-led peacekeeping forces cordoned off the scene in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica after the explosion late Thursday, and the case is under investigation by U.N. security forces.
It remains unclear whether the grenade was "thrown to or placed under the cars," said a Kosovo police spokesman.
The latest blast has worsened the situation in northern Kosovo, where nearly half of Kosovo Serbs are living. The staff of the European Union were withdrawn last weekend from northern Kosovo due to security reasons.
The local court has been one of the few institutions in northern Kosovo under the administration of the U.N. Mission sincemid-1999. On the night of Feb. 17 when Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, the court was hit by an explosion.
After the incident, scores of Serbs protested near the court, demanding their return to the job they used to have before 1999.
Kosovo Serb police officers refused to obey the orders from their ethnic Albanian superiors in the Serb-dominated north since Kosovo self-declared independence from Serbia. But they remained in the job and admitted the authority of the U.N. Mission in Kosovo.
Some 120,000 Serbs are living in the ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo with about half of them being in the north.
The EU is planning a 2,000-strong EU police and justice mission in Kosovo.
Source: Xinhua
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