The Guardian-Arms cache found after ethnic Serb gunmen storm village in Kosovo
September 25, 2023 3 min 581 words
这则报道揭示了科索沃的一个严重危机，暴力冲突和武器库被发现，引发国际社会的担忧。报道指出，民族塞尔维亚枪手闯入一个村庄，与警察激烈对抗，并封锁了一个修道院，这是多年来暴力升级的一个严重标志，造成一名警察和四名攻击者丧生。 警方发布的照片显示了大口径武器、炮弹和一辆装甲车。科索沃内政部长表示，他们找到了大量重型武器、反步兵武器、爆炸物、军服、后勤物资和设备，足以支持数百名袭击者。这一事件导致了塞尔维亚和科索沃关系的严重恶化，国际社会正在寻求缓解紧张局势的下一步措施。 美国国务卿谴责了这次袭击，呼吁双方回到谈判桌前，避免加剧紧张局势。这次事件使科索沃陷入了数月来紧张局势和谈判停滞的严重危机。总体来说，这篇报道突显了巨大的地缘政治压力和危险，科索沃问题依然是国际社会关注的焦点，需要寻求持久的解决方案。
Kosovan authorities say they have recovered a large cache of arms after ethnic Serb gunmen stormed a village in the restive north at the weekend, battling police and barricading themselves into a monastery.
Armed police units are continuing to search vehicles and houses around the village of Banjska after the violence, which left a police officer and three of the attackers dead. The body of a fourth attacker was found on Monday morning, police said.
Photographs released by police showed a haul of large-calibre weapons, shells and what appeared to be a small armoured vehicle.
The interior minister, Xhelal Sveçla, said authorities had recovered “an exceptionally large number of heavy weapons, anti-infantry weapons, explosives, uniforms, logistics, food reserves, and equipment for barricades”.
“We can easily say that the equipment was destined for several hundreds of other assailants,” Sveçla added.
International leaders were meeting in Brussels on Monday to consider next steps to try to calm tensions.
The US deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs, Gabriel Escobar, was in Brussels to meet officials from France, Italy and the EU envoy for the Balkans, Miroslav Lajčák.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, condemned the attack and called on both sides to return to talks. He said: “We call on the governments of Kosovo and Serbia to avoid actions which could further inflame tensions and to immediately return to the EU-facilitated dialogue.”
The attack has resulted in a near-breakdown of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, which declared a day of mourning on Monday and sent a briefing note to EU and international leaders describing the attack as reminiscent “of the hybrid techniques used in the early stages of Russian occupation in Crimea” in 2014.
“Uniforms and flak jackets resemble those that are routinely normally used in combat operations … The aim of this attack may have been to instigate a tougher action from Kosovo in order to provoke wider inter-ethnic grievances,” the note said.
The incident marked one of the gravest escalations in Kosovo for years, after months of mounting tensions and stalling talks between the government in Pristina and Serbia.
Ethnic Albanians make up a majority of Kosovo’s 1.8 million people. But 50,000 Serbs in the north of the former Serbian province do not accept Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence and see Belgrade as their capital, more than two decades after a Kosovo Albanian guerrilla uprising against Serbian rule.
Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, has blamed Serbia for financing and sending armed men to Kosovo.
The Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, has denied the allegations, and claimed on Sunday that the gunmen were reacting to “terror”.
“You can kill us all. Serbia will never recognise the independence of Kosovo, that monster creation that you made by bombing Serbia,” Vučić said, referring to the Nato intervention in 1999 that led to Kosovo separating from Serbia.
He condemned the killing of the police officer, but said the clash was the result of “brutal” pressure on Kosovan Serbs who no longer wanted to “endure Kurti’s terror”.
Efforts to normalise relations through a dialogue in Brussels have reached a deadlock.
In an interview with the Guardian last week, Kurdi said that continuing instability had made the region “a playground for the geopolitical games of the Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China”.
He described the latest abortive meeting on 14 September between him and Vučić as a debacle and said the EU’s Lajčák had “lost neutrality”.