At least 30 gunmen killed a Kosovar Albanian police officer then stormed an Orthodox monastery in Kosovo near its border with Serbia, setting off ongoing gunbattles that have left three assailants dead and raised tensions between the two former wartime foes as they seek to normalize ties.

Police have surrounded Banjska, a village located 55 kilometers (35 miles) north of the Kosovo's capital where the monastery is located, and the gunfire is continuing, according to Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who said the attack had support from neighboring Serbia.

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The Kosovo Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church said a temple of the monastery in Banjska was locked down after the gunmen stormed it. A group of pilgrims from Serbia was inside the temple along with an abbot.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was expected to speak later Sunday to “expose Kurti’s lies,” according to pro-government media, apparently referring to Kurti's statement that Serbia backed the attack. It was unclear if the gunmen were Serbs.

Serbia and its former province, Kosovo, have been at odds for decades.

Their 1998-99 war left more than 10,000 people dead, mostly Kosovo Albanians. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 but Belgrade has refused to recognize the move.

Earlier this month, an EU-facilitated meeting in Brussels between Kurti and Vucic to normalize ties ended in acrimony. The United States has supported the negotiations and the EU’s position in trying to resolve the ongoing source of tension in the Balkans.

On Sunday, the Kosovo diocese said a group of masked men in an armored vehicle stormed the monastery, breaking down the locked gate and shooting guns.

“Armed, masked men move around the courtyard and occasional gunshots are heard,” it said.

Earlier on Sunday Prime Minister Kurti said “masked professionals armed with heavy weapons” launched the attack opened fire on a police patrol at about 3 a.m. (01:00 GMT) in Banjska near the monastery.

Three of the assailants were killed and one was arrested. Four ethnic Serbs were arrested in a nearby village with communication equipment. Other weapons and ammunition was found at a location apparently used by the assailants, according to Kosovar police.

One police officer has been killed and two others injured, the last during the armed confrontation, apparently near the monastery at the village, authorities said.

At a news conference Kurti displayed a set of photos which showed a number of four-wheel drive vehicles without license plates and an armored personnel carrier “which does not belong to the Kosovo police” near the monastery.

He described the armed assailants as "an organized professional unit who have come to fight in Kosovo,” calling on them to hand themselves over to Kosovar authorities.

Police said the situation remained tense while “gunfire attacks against police units continue with the same intensity from the moving criminal groupings.”

Kosovo police said the attack began when three police units were dispatched to a bridge at the entrance to the village that had been blocked by trucks. The police officers came under fire from weapons that included hand grenades and bombs and one was killed. The armed men then stormed the monastery.

Kurti called it a “sad day” for Kosovo, identifying the dead police officer as Afrim Bunjaku.

Local roads and two borders crossings into Serbia were closed. Most of Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority lives in four municipalities around Mitrovica, in the north.

“It was a real little war: first some gunfire, then silence, shootings, detonations,” Serbian news agency Kossev quoted an unidentified resident as saying.

Kurti wrote on his Facebook page that “Organized crime, which is politically, financially and logistically supported from Belgrade, is attacking our state.”

The speaker of Serbia’s parliament, Vladimir Orlic, responded that Kurti “was quick to blame the Serbs" but actually was the one who wanted an “escalation.”

“He (Kurti) said it was some kind of organized action by professionals,” Orlic told Serbian TV station Prva. “They must have been identified and he knows who they are and what they are, and everything is clear.”

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, condemned “the hideous attack by an armed gang against Kosovo police officers” and said “all facts about the attack need to be established. The responsible perpetrators must face justice.”

He added that the EU's rule of law mission, or EULEX, had representatives on the ground and in close contact with authorities and the NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

Borrell talked on phone both with Kurti and Vucic reiterating “his call for the assailants to surrender immediately and the release of the pilgrims at Banjska Monastery, for them to leave safely.”

International police officers from the EU mission and a limited number of Kosovo police have been responsible for enforcing the rule of law in northern Kosovo. Serbia has vehemently protested the presence of the Kosovo Police.

In February, the EU put forward a 10-point plan to end the latest round of heightened tensions between Serbia and Kosovo. Kurti and Vucic gave their approval at the time, but with some reservations that have still not been resolved.

The EU warned both countries that the commitments the leaders made in February “are binding on them and play a role in the European path of the parties” – in other words, Serbia and Kosovo's chances of joining the 27-nation bloc.

The Kosovo-Serbia border is guarded by peacekeepers from the 4,000-strong NATO-led KFOR force, which has been in Kosovo since 1999. In May, tensions in northern Kosovo left 93 peacekeepers hurt in riots.

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The storming of a north Kosovo monastery has thrown attention on persistent trouble in the ethnic Serbian-majority region 15 years after Pristina declared independence.

Here are facts about the unrest.

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What is behind the friction?

Independence for ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo came on Feb. 17, 2008, almost a decade after a guerrilla uprising against repressive Serbian rule.

It is recognised by more than 100 countries.

Serbia, however, still formally deems Kosovo to be part of its territory. It accuses Kosovo’s central government of trampling on the rights of ethnic Serbs but denies accusations of whipping up strife within its neighbour’s borders.

Serbs account for 5 percent of Kosovo’s 1.8 million people, and ethnic Albanians about 90 percent. Some 50,000 Serbs in north Kosovo, on the border with Serbia, vent their rejectionism by refusing to pay the state utility for energy they use and often attacking police who try to make arrests.

All of them receive benefits from Serbia’s budget and pay no taxes either to Pristina or Belgrade.

What’s made matters worse?

Unrest in the region intensified when ethnic Albanian mayors took office in northern Kosovo’s Serb-majority area after April elections the Serbs boycotted, a move that led the US and its allies to rebuke Pristina.

Last December, North Kosovo Serbs erected multiple roadblocks and exchanged fire with police after a former Serb policeman was arrested for allegedly assaulting serving police officers during a previous protest.

But tensions had been ticking upward for months in a dispute over car license plates. Kosovo has for years wanted Serbs in the north to switch their Serbian license plates, dating to the pre-independence era, to ones issued by Pristina, as part of its policy to assert authority over all of Kosovo territory.

Last July, Pristina announced a two-month window for the plates to be switched over, triggering unrest, but later agreed to push the implementation date back to the end of 2023.

Ethnic Serb mayors in northern municipalities, along with local judges and 600 police officers, resigned in November last year in protest at the looming switch, deepening dysfunction and lawlessness in the region.

What do the Serbs ultimately want?

Serbs in Kosovo seek to create an association of majority-Serb municipalities operating with considerable autonomy.

Pristina rejects this as a recipe for a mini-state within Kosovo, effectively partitioning the country along ethnic lines.

Serbia and Kosovo have made little progress on this and other issues since committing in 2013 to a European Union-sponsored dialogue aimed at normalising ties – for both a requirement for EU membership.

What is the role of NATO and the EU?

The transatlantic NATO military alliance retains 3,700 peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, the remainder of an original 50,000-strong force deployed in 1999.

The alliance says it would intervene in line with its mandate if Kosovo were at risk of renewed conflict. The EU’s EULEX mission, begun in 2008 to train domestic police and crack down on graft and gangsterism, retains 200 special police officers in Kosovo.

What is the latest EU peace plan?

US and EU envoys are pressing Serbia and Kosovo to approve a plan presented in mid-2022 under which Belgrade would stop lobbying against a Kosovo seat in international organisations including the United Nations.

Kosovo would commit to form an association of Serb-majority municipalities. And both sides would open representative offices in each other’s capital to help resolve outstanding disputes.

But talks on normalising relations between the two former wartime foes stalled last week, with the EU blaming Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti for failing to set up the association of municipalities.

Kurti, who had agreed such an association should have only limited powers whose decisions could be overruled by central government, accused the EU mediator of siding with Serbia to pressure him to implement only one part of the deal.

Serbia’s president appears ready to approve the plan, warning recalcitrant nationalists in parliament that Belgrade will otherwise face damaging isolation in Europe.

But with nationalist hardliners powerful on both sides, not least among north Kosovo Serbs, no breakthrough is on the horizon.

What’s at stake for local Serb population?

The area of north Kosovo where Serbs form a majority is in important ways a virtual extension of Serbia. Local administration and public servants, teachers, doctors and big infrastructure projects are paid for by Belgrade.

Local Serbs fear that once fully integrated within Kosovo they could lose benefits such as Serbia’s free public healthcare and be forced onto Kosovo’s private healthcare system.

They also fear pensions would be smaller, given that the average monthly pension in Kosovo is worth 100 euros ($107) compared with 270 euros in Serbia.

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A Saudi delegation is due to visit Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah this week, a Palestinian official said, amid diplomatic efforts to secure an accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia that could involve concessions for the Palestinians.

The delegation will be led by the non-resident Saudi envoy to the Palestinians, who was appointed last month, the official said.

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The visit comes after both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that efforts were underway to reach an agreement normalizing relations between their two countries.

US officials have cautioned that any agreement, expected to include a defense agreement with Washington and a civilian nuclear program for Saudi Arabia, would be some way off.

Among the issues to be resolved would also be the Palestinian question, and calls for a revival of a peace process leading to a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in 2014 and relations between the two sides have plummeted amid a tide of violence.

Last week Abbas said no Middle East peace agreement would be achievable until Palestinians were granted full rights, and the Saudi foreign minister also called for a revival of the objective of a two-state solution.

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