A special police forces officer stands next to a burning car following clashes between Kosovo police and ethnic Serb protesters in the Kosovo town of Zvecan. /Valdrin Xhemaj/Reuters
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has placed the country's army on full combat alert and ordered its units to move closer to Kosovo after clashes there between protesters and police.
"An urgent movement (of troops) to the Kosovo border has been ordered," defense minister Milos Vucevic said in a live TV broadcast. "It is clear that the terror against the Serb community in Kosovo is happening," he said.
Police and protesters clashed in the Kosovo town of Zvecan after a crowd gathered in front of the municipality building, trying to prevent a newly-elected ethnic Albanian mayor from entering his office.
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Police fired tear gas to disperse protestors, while a police car was set ablaze. At least four people have been injured in the clashes, according to local reports, with several vehicles from the NATO peacekeeping mission to Kosovo arriving on the scene.
The protests follow widely-boycotted local elections, where some 50,000 Serbs living in four north Kosovo municipalities, including Zvecan, refused to take part in a April 23 vote in protest that their demands for more autonomy had not been met.
The boycott is considered to be the latest setback to a March peace deal between Kosovo and Serbia.
The election turnout was 3.47 percent and local Serbs said they would not work with the four municipalities' new mayors – all from ethnic Albanian parties – because they do not represent them.
Earlier, police Kosovo's main city Pristina issued a statement saying that they were assisting the newly-elected mayors so they could enter municipal offices in the four northern municipalities.
Serbs in Kosovo's northern region do not accept Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia. Ethnic Albanians form more than 90 percent of the population in Kosovo, with Serbs only the majority in the northern region.
The Western-backed plan verbally agreed to by the Kosovo and Serbian governments in March aimed to reduce tensions by granting local Serbs more autonomy.
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