(29 Dec 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rudare, Kosovo - 29 December 2022
1. Truck moving from barricade position
2. Truck turning
3. Truck leaving
4. Trucks and buses at barricade
5. Trucks
6. Masked man around trucks
7. Masked man entering driver's seat of the truck
8. Media
9. Masked man driving truck away
10. Another masked man driving another truck away
11. Media, focus change to truck going in reverse
12. Truck reversing
South Mitrovica - 29 December 2022
13. KFOR vehicles on the bridge
14. KFOR soldiers
15. Police
16. Pigeons
17. Police on the bridge
18. Serb flags
19. Bridge
20. KFOR troops
21. People crossing bridge
22. SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Hilmi Beqiri, Kosovo Albanian resident of Mitrovica:
"There should not have been any barricades to begin with. It's an obstacle for both nations here, barricades should not have been set. They (Serbs) have placed the barricades and now they have to remove them by themselves. It's a problem for us, and I don't know for how long the European Union will tolerate these negative things that Serbia is doing."
23. Police by roadblock
STORYLINE:
Serbia on Thursday revoked the combat readiness of its troops on the border with Kosovo as local Serbs started removing more than a dozen of the roadblocks they had set up in the north of the state, in a sign of the easing of tensions that have sparked fears of a new conflict in the Balkans.
Earlier in the day, Kosovo reopened a border crossing with Serbia after a nearby barricade that led to its closure was removed. Later, Serbs in Kosovo dismantled another roadblock and more are set to follow.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic first announced late on Wednesday that Serbs would start removing their barricades. The move defuses weeks of tensions between former war foes Kosovo and Serbia.
Kosovo is a former Serbian province from which Serbian forces were dislodged following a NATO bombing campaign in 1999. It declared independence nine years later but Belgrade does not recognise it.
Kosovo had demanded that NATO-led peacekeepers remove the barricades, and said its own forces would do it otherwise. Serbia then raised combat readiness of its troops on the border, demanding an end to “attacks” against Kosovo Serbs.
The state RTS television said Thursday that the Serbian army downgraded the high alert of its troops near the Kosovo border after the agreement to remove the barricades. This deal was reached at a late-night crisis meeting with the leaders of Kosovo's Serbs, Vucic said.
It followed the release from jail of a former Kosovo Serb police officer, whose detention on a terrorism change triggered protests and tension in northern Kosovo. A Kosovo court ordered him placed under house arrest Wednesday.
The roadblocks consisted mostly of loaded heavy trucks, other vehicles and tents. Unknown assailants set fire to two trucks on a roadblock in the northern town of Mitrovica, Kosovo police said.
The former police officer, Dejan Pantic, was detained December 10 for “terrorism” after allegedly assaulting a Kosovo police officer during an earlier protest.
Kosovo's president and prime minister have criticised the court decision to release Pantic from jail.
The unrest over Pantic's detention sparked tense standoffs and gunshots but no major clashes. However, international concerns grew of a new conflict in Europe while the war in Ukraine is raging as well.
A separatist rebellion by Kosovo's majority Albanians led to a 1998-99 war that featured a brutal Serbian crackdown in the territory that was its province at the time.
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