Balkans

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – An explosion in the Kosovo town of Mitrovica wounded three U.N. police officers and two NATO soldiers during heavy clashes on Monday with Serb protesters, Kosovo police said. A police statement said the wounded personnel were being evacuated.

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – Serbs attacked a U.N. convoy carrying Serb detainees from a raid in Kosovo on Monday, enabling several detainees to escape, a Reuters witness said.

GERDEC, Albania (Reuters) – Albanian troops searched through rubble on Sunday for survivors of a huge munitions blast that razed an army base near the capital Tirana and killed at least nine people.

BELGRADE/PRISTINA (Reuters) – The red box of the buttery ‘Plazma’ cookie, one of ex-Yugoslavia’s best-loved snacks, offers a quick introduction to the dilemma of businesses trapped in the political tussle between Serbia and Kosovo.

TIRANA (Reuters) – About 160 people, including several Americans, were killed or injured on Saturday by a series of large explosions at an Albanian army base on the outskirts of the capital Tirana, government officials said.

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – A couple of hundred ethnic Serb protesters took over a United Nations court in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica in north Kosovo on Friday after U.N. police guarding the compound retreated.

PRISTINA (Reuters) – U.N. authorities in Kosovo told Serbia on Wednesday to stop interfering in Serb areas of the new state, where a Serb boycott has fuelled speculation Belgrade is trying to partition the territory.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia’s government is in deep crisis, nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Friday, accusing his pro-Western coalition partners of giving up on defending Serbia’s claim to Kosovo.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The United Nation’s new war crimes prosecutor called on Friday for the arrest of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the two top war crimes suspects from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Kosovo’s independence is irreversible and Serbia is damaging its own interests by not accepting it, former U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari said.