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Violence on the border between Kosovo and Serbia continued to escalate on Wednesday as members of the Serbian minority in northern Kosovo set fire to a border post that has been in dispute since Monday. The attackers also reportedly fired shots at a nearby outpost run by the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR). The border station has been contested since the beginning of the week when Kosovo's special police seized two northern border crossings in attempt to enforce an import ban on Serbian goods. On Tuesday a Kosovar police officer was killed, reportedly with a gunshot to the head. KFOR troops...

BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 11, 2009 – With NATO defense ministers having agreed to reduce the alliance’s military presence in Kosovo from 14,000 to 10,000 troops by the year’s end, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today urged that the reduction take place as an organized process. On the first day of an alliance defense ministers conference here, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced the force reduction today, noting that Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, has proposed moving toward a deterrent presence in Kosovo that will require fewer troops in the country. Gates said...

30 December 2008 | 18:04 -> 21:05 | Source: B92, Beta, Tanjug KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- After two Albanians stabbed a 16-year-old Serb with a knife in Kosovska Mitrovica this afternoon and incidents that ensued, the situation is now calm. Automatic gunfire was heard as an Albanian-owned store was set on fire near the bridge on the Ibar River which divides Kosovska Mitrovica into its northern, predominantly Serb, and southern, Albanian part. The victim, Nikola Božović, was taken to hospital with a 10-centimeter stab wound apparently in the lumbar area of his back. Doctor Trajče Bogeski said that the boy was...

Tuesday December 18, 6:18 AM British soldier dies after being shot in Kosovo A British soldier with the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, KFOR, died after being shot in the Yugoslav province's main city of Pristina, a KFOR spokesman said. The spokesman, Captain Ollie Major, said: "A British soldier was injured as a result of a gunshot wound. The soldier later died." Major said the soldier had been on duty in front of a partially built Christian Orthodox church when he was shot. He did not give further details and did not name the soldier. Unrest between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian ...

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA (AFP) - UN police were forced to withdraw Monday from the Serb-populated part of this flashpoint Kosovo town after coming under attack as they stormed a court occupied by Serbs opposed to independence. Police said more than 100 people were injured as the troops met gunfire and suspected grenade blasts in the worst violence to have flared in Kosovo since its independence declaration a month ago on February 17. The clashes erupted after UN police and NATO-led KFOR (Kosovo Force) troops surrounded the courthouse in Kosovska Mitrovica for a pre-dawn raid to evict the Serb protestors. Kosovo police...

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Feb. 20, 2008 – NATO will continue its mission in the newly independent republic of Kosovo, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here yesterday. Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia on Feb. 17. The United States has a National Guard brigade deployed in the country now, and its mission will not change, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said during a news conference here. NATO put together its Kosovo Force at the end of a 78-day bombing campaign in 1999 to stop Serbs from driving ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo. NATO forces entered the Serbian province...

Leaders of about 400 members of the Minnesota National Guard who have been deployed to Kosovo as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force describe the atmosphere there as "energized, well-mannered and tense" after the former Yugoslavian province declared independence on Sunday. "The next few days are likely to be tense for Kosovo as the new country awaits international recognition," said Lt. Col. Michael Funk, commander of 2nd Battalion, 135th Infantry, a Mankato-based unit. Minnesota troops are largely stationed in a southeastern portion of Kosovo, where independence demonstrations were described as peaceful and limited to some sporadic celebratory gunfire. But...

Another Failed State? Kosovo's declaration of independence isn't likely to solve its many problems—or defuse tensions in the troubled Balkans. Kosovo declared independence Sunday, but it's unlikely any time soon to become the world's 193rd country. What it will almost certainly be is a failed state, unrecognized by the United Nations, unable to govern itself, dependent on Europe for its police and NATO for its armed forces. After eight years as an international protectorate and billions of dollars in aid and reconstruction funds, its economic prospects are grim. Unemployment is 57 percent, and among youths it's more like 70 percent;...

BELGRADE -- KFOR has thwarted a fake Serbian Army (VS) attack on Kosovo following a VS tip-off, says Lt. Gen. Mladen Ćirković. “We give KFOR information, they check it. That’s how recently, following one of our tip-offs, a number of Yugoslav army uniforms were confiscated,” Ćirković told daily Politika. “According to our data, a paramilitary group was planning to stage a fake VS attack on Kosovo,” he said. The general said that operative evidence existed incidents were being planned around Bujanovac, Preševo and on the border with Macedonia, and that the VS would not tolerate any provocations of violence in...

Pristina - A United States soldier serving with a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo was killed in a traffic accident Sunday night, police sources in the province said. Two other US troops were injured in the crash, which occurred in Caglavica, a section of the capital Pristina, sources said. Neither official confirmation of the report nor any other details were immediately available. Peacekeepers of KFOR had been deployed in Kosovo since mid-1999, when NATO ousted Serbian security forces to end the repression of the majority Albanian population.

Are the cases of missing persons in Kosovo science fiction or consciously closed files? Unexpectedly for many Kosovo crisis observers, proliferation of terrorism and violence resulted with huge number of cases of missing and kidnapped civilians, mostly non-Albanians (especially Serbs): in the summer of 1998, spring 1999 and during 2000. Actually, last reported kidnappings occurred in 2004. Although such acts of terror were well known to local population and local authorities, eccentric doubts could be summarized with only one question: If victims were held in hidden prisons and if after some time they were executed, where are the bodies? Searches,...

Released : Sunday, September 10, 2006 8:48 AM ATHENS, Greece-One Swedish soldier was killed and another was slightly injured when they were hit by a car in northern Greece, authorities said Sunday. The dead man, 25, was run over by the car near the town of Kallithea in the Halkidiki peninsula, some 90 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, police said. The injured man also was hit by the car. The two soldiers, who were serving in the peacekeeping force in Kosovo, known as KFOR, were on holiday in the Halkidiki peninsula. Their names were not released.

Prague/Pristina- A Czech soldier serving in the Czech military contingent within KFOR international forces died at the Sajkovac base in Kosovo, southern Serbia, today, the Defence Ministry told CTK. The 34-year-old officer cadet of the military police was found dead by his colleague in the barracks this morning. The military informed the soldier's family immediately. The military police have started investigating the tragic event. "The preliminary examination has not proved that the death was caused by another person, but the investigation continues," Pavel Lipka, commander of the 9th Czech military contingent, told CTK by phone. Other members of the Czech...

CAMP BONDSTEEL, KOSOVO (Army News Service, Dec. 28, 2005) – Soldiers from KFOR 6B convoyed to a hilltop church overlooking the small town of Letnice/Letnica, Kosovo, Dec. 25 to deliver hand-made fleece blankets to residents there. “It’s important for me to celebrate Christmas here,” said 1st Lt. Melanie Meyer, liaison officer, Task Force Falcon. “This is my first Christmas away from my family in the states. I wanted to come out here today so I can still feel the same joy of giving during Christmas. Watching the faces of the kids getting really excited is great.” Several children dressed in...

CAMP BONDSTEEL, KOSOVO (Army News Service, Dec 8, 2005) – Families of U.S. troops in the Kosovo Force have donated clothing and school supplies to an elementary school in a small mountainside village. In the village of Ukzmajl, Kosovo, 600 Euro dollars, or $750 USD is the yearly budget allotted by the municipality for the Skenderbeu School. Aware of the scarcity of funding for the school, Kosovo Force Soldiers and their families decided to do something to help out. Eight soldiers from the Headquarters and Headquarters Operations Company, 628th Military Intelligence Battalion, 28th Infantry Division from Harrisburg, Pa., visited the...

WASHINGTON, – While U.S. forces have been defending freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq, another mission to protect local populations from brutality and oppression has been winding down in the Balkans. That mission holds important lessons for operations currently under way in Iraq, U.S. forces in Kosovo say. In 1999, 38,000 NATO forces were in Kosovo to establish and maintain a secure environment, enforce compliance with agreements that ended a campaign of ethnic cleansing by former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and provide assistance to the U.N. Mission in Kosovo. Today, there are less than 18,000 multinational troops on the ground, of...

It's easy to spot the changes to Kosovo from the air -- all the U.N.-provided plastic tarpaulins that provided shelter in the years after the NATO intervention are gone. In their place are orange roofs covering homes that have been rebuilt. Roughly 1,700 American servicemembers -- almost all National Guardsmen -- are part of the 17,000-man Kosovo Force helping provide the environment the province needs to recover. Four UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters fly over Kosovo in support of a troop visit by Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and USO celebrities on Aug. 15....

GEORGE ROBERTSON, who as Defence Secretary co-ordinated the 1999 Kosovo bombing campaign, is to return to the Balkans as peacemaker between Serbs and Albanians. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen is to become chief negotiator between Belgrade and Pristina over the future of Kosovo, which wants to become independent after six years of NATO military presence. Its ambition is backed by Albania, but bitterly opposed by the Serbs. The United Nations, which has run Kosovo since the end of the bombing campaign, will today announce that Lord Robertson has agreed to come out of semi-retirement to conduct the crucial negotiations. Since...

Mon 18 Apr 2005 3:54pm (UK) UN Discovers Human Remains in Kosovo Cave "PA" The United Nations in Kosovo said today they had discovered a cave allegedly used to secretly dispose of the human remains of non-Albanians in Kosovo killed during a war in 1998-1999. Initial findings indicated the area “was used to secretly dispose of human remains, and could be related to the disappearances” of non-Albanians in Kosovo in 1998, the UN statement said. The UN-run Office on Missing Persons and Forensics began excavating the cave and its surrounding area in Klina, some 30 miles west of the province’s...

FIVE hundred British troops were last night rushed to Kosovo amid fears of a new explosion in ethnic violence. The men from the 1st Battalion, The Royal Green Jackets have been deployed after an urgent request from NATO. Commanders of the force in Kosovo want to make a show of strength as tensions rise. The Green Jackets will patrol the capital Pristina to keep ethnic Albanians and Serbs apart. This time last year 31 died and 500 were wounded in violence.