(ANSA-AFP) - PRISTINA, 12 APR - Kosovo police arrested four
officers late Tuesday over a shooting incident in which an
ethnic Serb was wounded in the country's volatile north, a
minister said. The incident on Monday night reflects soaring
tensions between Pristina and ethnic Serbs less than a month
after arch-foes Kosovo and Serbia stopped short of signing a
deal on normalising ties. Ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo
declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Serbia, however, does
not recognise this, and encourages Kosovo's 120,000 ethnic Serbs
to defy Pristina's authority -- especially in the north where
they make up the majority. Milan Jovanovic said he was shot
while driving next to a Kosovo police checkpoint on a road near
the flashpoint city of Mitrovica.Jovanovic, who underwent
surgery in a Mitrovica hospital, told Serbian state-run RTS
television that he heard a shot and felt a pain in his shoulder
just after passing the checkpoint.
In a Facebook post late Tuesday, Kosovo Interior Minister Xhelal
Svecla said: "Four police officers were arrested and remanded in
48-hour custody." The officers were suspected of not reporting
the incident, and one was suspected of being involved in it,
Svecla added. The initial results of an investigation suggested
that the driver had failed to obey an officer's signal to stop
his car, after which the officer opened fire, injuring the
driver, the minister said. He identified the victim only by the
initials M.J. (ANSA-AFP).
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