MITROVICA (Kosovo), March 17: Serbs fired guns and threw grenades at UN police and NATO troops in Kosovo on Monday in the worst violence since Albanian leaders declared Kosovo’s independence from Serbia a month ago.

NATO said its troops came under automatic gunfire in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, in clashes with Serbs, who oppose independence.

The clashes began after UN special police, backed by NATO peacekeepers, stormed a UN court that had been seized by Serbs on Friday.

Serb media reports said about 70 civilians were wounded.

UN police said 63 officers were injured, in addition to a dozen members of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force.

The clashes highlighted the risk of Kosovo’s partition along ethnic lines following the independence declaration on Feb 17.

Serbia’s ally Russia demanded restraint by NATO and Serbia said it was consulting Moscow on joint steps to protect Kosovo Serbs.

A Serbian party leader said NATO was behaving like the Nazi occupiers of World War Two. But a NATO spokesman said KFOR would not give in to violence.

It was the third major challenge to NATO and UN authority in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo since protesters burned down two border posts last month. A European Union office was also forced to move out because of security threats.

A Serb hospital director said three Serbs were badly hurt, one shot through the head “by a sniper”. A NATO spokesman said warning shots were fired into the air, not into the crowd.

UN spokesman Alexander Ivanko said several hundred UN police and nine civilian staff had been moved from north Mitrovica to the south, but would return “as soon as the security situation permits”.

Mitrovica calmed down, but with KFOR soldiers securing key points rather than the UN and Kosovo police who normally patrolled the town before the independence declaration.

“NATO condemns in the strongest form the violence we have seen in northern Kosovo today,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. “KFOR will respond firmly to any acts of violence, as is its mandate from the United Nations,” he said.

Serbia blamed the UN and NATO for heavy-handed action.

Serbia’s caretaker prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, accused NATO of “implementing a policy of force against Serbia” and said Serbia and Russia were discussing moves to stop “all forms of violence against Kosovo Serbs”.

This raised the prospect of Serbia inviting Russian troops into Serb-dominated northern Kosovo as peacekeepers, undermining the authority of the NATO-led KFOR mission, creating potential for conflict, or heralding a partition of the territory.

Serbian President Boris Tadic, recalling the March 17, 2004, Albanian riots in which 19 people were killed and hundreds of Serb homes burned down, warned of the risk of provoking a fresh Albanian “pogrom” against Kosovo’s 120,000 minority Serbs.Tomislav Nikolic of Serbia’s largest party, the hardline opposition Radicals, called it a “a brutal and savage action” against Serbs.

He said it reminded him of actions “Hitler’s occupying regime carried out against Serbs” in World War Two.

DAWN RAID: The clash began at dawn when several hundred UN special police, backed by NATO peacekeepers, stormed the UN court and arrested dozens of people.

Hundreds of Serbs fought back with stones, grenades and powerful firecrackers, forcing the UN police to pull back and leave KFOR to face the rioters. Rioters attacked UN vehicles, breaking doors to free 10 of those detained in the raid.

NATO said shots were fired at troops.

“We used automatic weapons to respond but fired only warning shots,” French spokesman Etienne du Fayet de la Tour told Reuters. “We shot in the air, not into the crowd.”

A KFOR spokesman said eight French KFOR soldiers were injured by “grenades, stones and Molotov cocktails”. UN police ordered a pullout “after attacks with explosive devices suspected to be hand grenades, and firearms”, a statement said.

Fourteen Ukrainian police in UN uniforms were injured when “fighters” attacked their police station”, Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko said. Poland said 13 officers were hurt.—Reuters