Police and protesters fight running battles in Kosovo

Riot police and protesters fought running battles in Kosovo’s capital Pristina on Tuesday as anti-government demonstrations erupted into the worst unrest since the former Serbian province seceded in 2008.

Masked police officers fired tear gas and water cannons in an attempt to disperse about 2,000 protesters who had taken to the streets in rallies organised by opposition political parties.

Ambulances attended to injured people as police pursued protesters into side streets around central Pristina. Demonstrators hurled rocks and bottles, injuring about 22 police officers, police said. It was not immediately known how many protesters were hurt: 27 were arrested.

It was the second bout of unrest since Saturday, set off by anger about a government climbdown over the fate of a huge mining complex claimed by Serbia and remarks deemed offensive by an ethnic Serb minister.

The violence appeared to subside as dusk fell but was a potent reminder of the depth of popular dissatisfaction in the young Balkan country, which remains mired in poverty and corruption seven years since declaring independence from Serbia with the backing of the West.

The government of Isa Mustafa, which took office in early December, had pledged to take control of the Trepca mine, which has been held in trust by a United Nations-created privatisation body since Kosovo’s 1998-99 war and threatened by myriad creditor claims.

But Mustafa backed down days later in the face of a furious response from Serbia, which claims 75 per cent ownership of the the complex, and pressure from Western embassies concerned at the possible repercussions for a fragile European Union-led dialogue between the two sides.

Trepca’s lead, zinc and silver mines once accounted for 75 per cent of the mineral wealth of socialist Yugoslavia, employing 20,000 people. Trepca now operates at a minimum level to keep the mines open, with several thousand miners on both sides of Kosovo’s Serb-Albanian divide.

The protesters also sought the dismissal of an ethnic Serb minister in the mainly Kosovo Albanian government after he branded as "savages" a group of Albanians who lost relatives in the war and had protested against ethnic Serb pilgrims marking Orthodox Christmas in January.

There was no sign of intervention on Tuesday by Nato’s 5,000-strong peacekeeping force or hundreds of EU police officers stationed in Kosovo.

Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 1999 with the help of Nato air strikes to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces waging a counter-insurgency war.

The territory of 1.8 million people, 90 per cent of them ethnic Albanians, declared independence in 2008 and has been recognised by more than 100 countries.

But it remains impoverished and blighted by a reputation for organised crime and corruption that has deterred investment. The official unemployment rate is 45 per cent.

- Reuters