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MITROVICA, KOSOVO - NORTH Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) troops were left holding the line against a hostile Serb population in north Kosovo after riots forced the pullout of United Nations police and civilian staff.
Armoured French infantry vehicles stood on Monday at the head of a column of trucks full of French and Spanish troops at one of the two main bridges separating Kosovo Albanians from Kosovo Serbs in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica.
The United Nations mission in the newly-independent country said the withdrawal of its police and officials from the Serb stronghold, whose people bitterly oppose Kosovo's independence from Serbia, was only temporary but could not say when they would return.
Monday's clashes highlighted the risk of Kosovo's partition along ethnic lines and cast further doubt on the deployment in northern Kosovo of a European Union police mission intended to take over much of the role of a nine-year-old UN mission.
French, Belgian and Spanish Nato troops in armoured personnel carriers (APCs) secured key points in the flashpoint town. The bridges to the Albanian south were closed. There were no UN or Kosovo police on the streets of the Serb north.
'We will maintain our intention to deploy the mission throughout the territory of Kosovo,' the EU's new Kosovo envoy, Mr Pieter Feith, told a news conference.
The violence, sparked by a UN police operation to retake a UN court seized three days earlier by protesting Serbs, was the worst since Kosovo's 90-per cent Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia on Feb 17.
Nato said its troops came under automatic gunfire as Serbs converged on the court following the dawn raid. Serb media reports said about 70 civilians were wounded, along with dozens of UN police and soldiers of the 16,000-strong Nato-led peacekeeping force.
Nato's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Mr John Craddock, said some Serbs may have been hurt, but he had no details.
'I understand that today (Nato-led) forces had to use both lethal and non-lethal means to control the rioting crowd,' he told reporters during a visit to Afghanistan.
Soldiers had followed their rules of engagement, he said, adding: 'We want to continue to impress upon the Kosovo Serbian leadership how important it is to maintain control. Violence serves no purpose.' -- REUTERS
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