KOSOVO: Albanians set fire to Serbian churches in Kosovo yesterday in a second day of attacks as NATO boosted its force by 1,000, warning it would stamp out ethnic violence with "robust" action.
Meanwhile protesters in Serbia's three main cities stoned and burned mosques and other Islamic buildings, furious at what they say is NATO's failure to check Albanian "terrorism".
There were Serbian claims last night that Albanians hurled hand grenades at the Serbian quarter of a central Kosovo town in an attempt to take over a church protected by Finnish UN peacekeeping troops.
"There are some 300 Albanians trying to enter the Orthodox Church in Lipljan," said a Serb municipal leader, Mr Borivoje Vignjevic. "They are throwing hand grenades."
The call for reinforcements followed the worst day of ethnic clashes in Kosovo since NATO and the United Nations seized control of the province from Serbia in 1999.
Last night Britain said it would send 750 rapid-reaction infantry troops, while the United States said it would send some 350 men.
At least 23 people, from both the majority Albanian and minority Serbian populations, were killed and 500 injured, of whom 20 were in intensive care.
"The thousands of ethnic Albanians that attacked Kfor, the police, Serb enclaves and churches should be aware of robust reserve forces," Kfor's mission commander, Gen Holger Kammerhoff of Germany, told reporters in the capital, Pristina.
Commanders of the multinational brigades were authorised to use "proportional force necessary to ensure safety of our soldiers, to protect the innocent people of Kosovo and re-establish freedom of movement in all of Kosovo," he said.
A Serbian official in Lipljan, central Kosovo, said about 300 Albanians were trying to enter a church protected by Finnish UN peacekeeping troops.
One church was torched in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica despite the efforts of French NATO peacekeepers, who fired tear-gas and rubber bullets to drive off the mob.
In the central town of Obilic, Serbians appealed to Kfor for weapons to defend themselves.
The violence began on Monday when a Serbian teenager was wounded in a drive-by shooting.
The following day three Albanian boys drowned in a river, reportedly after being chased by Serbs.