BELGRADE, Feb 21: Scores of protesters broke into the US embassy here on Thursday and set some rooms on fire in protest against Kosovo’s independence.

The embassy was closed at the time and was not being protected by police. Smoke could be seen after a small group of protesters started a fire in the US mission in the centre of the Serbian capital.

Up to 200,000 Serbs had massed in Belgrade to protest against Kosovo’s secession.

“As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia,” Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the crowd in front of the old Yugoslav parliament building. “We’ll never give up Kosovo, never!” protesters chanted back, as they waved national flags.

“We’re not alone in our fight. President Putin is with us,” Kostunica said.

A few people waved the flags of Russia and of Spain — which has also refused to recognise Pristina’s secession on Sunday.

In the crowds were many hardline nationalist Radicals, from Serbia’s biggest party, who shouted anti-Albanian slogans. “Today Kosovo is in all our hearts,” their leader Tomislav Nikolic told the rally.

A few score protesters, some in balaclavas, later threw flares and stones at the US embassy and tore boards covering its windows since they were smashed in riots earlier in the week.

In other protests, several hundred Serb army veterans at a border post between Kosovo and Serbia stoned Kosovo riot police.

Nato peacekeepers said they were determined to stop a repeat of Tuesday’s destruction of two other border posts by Serbs.

In Banja Luka in the Bosnian Serb Republic, several people were injured when protesters holding aloft portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin clashed with police in front of the US consulate.

Serbs from across Serbia and from Kosovo had poured into Belgrade earlier on hundreds of free buses and trains. Schoolchildren were given the day off.

After the speeches, marchers began to head to the city’s biggest Orthodox cathedral for prayers for the salvation of Serbs in Kosovo.

Some 120,000 Serbs live there among two million Albanians, half in the north next to Serbia, the rest in southern enclaves.

Belgrade wants them to stay, to keep alive its claim on the region.—Reuters