Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said today he will not back down from his decision to appoint Albanian mayors in Serb-majority cities, a move that has sparked violence in the region and forced NATO to build up its forces.

“Mayors should go and work in their offices,” Kurti told Kosovo media. “We need a normal […] What’s the point of having public buildings for government officials if we don’t use them?” he added.

Some 50,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo do not recognize his declaration of independence from Serbia and consider Belgrade their capital. Serbian residents of the area also refuse to recognize the results of the April municipal elections, given that the turnout was only 3.5%.

The mayors “should leave the region because they represent no one,” vice president of the Serbian List, the largest party of Kosovo Serbs, Igor Simic, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Lulzim Hetemi, the Albanian mayor of Leposavić, has been in his office since early Monday morning as NATO soldiers guard the town hall surrounded by barbed wire. The mayors of Zvecan and Zubin Potok are working from home.

According to an AFP journalist, in Zvecan, several dozen Serbs gathered again this morning in front of the city hall. However, compared to previous days, there were fewer demonstrators.

Barbed wire and metal bars are also installed around the city hall of this city. Soldiers of the KFOR peacekeeping force guard the building, while others were deployed on the road axles leading to the center of Zvecan, at the request of the Serbian List, in connection with the “masked men” throwing stones at two police cars. on Wednesday. According to the Kosovo Ministry of the Interior, one policeman was injured and the windows of two cars were shattered.

Earlier today, in the Serbian part of ethnically divided Mitrovica, two Kosovo Albanians were attacked and wounded by an “organized group of masked men,” according to Kosovo police.

Several hundred Albanians demonstrated at noon near the bridge connecting the Albanian and Serbian parts of the city, holding Albanian flags and chanting “Mitrovica cannot be divided.”

The police urged citizens not to go to the rally, so as not to “add fuel to the fire.”

The protesters intended to cross into the northern, Serbian part of the city, but powerful police forces blocked their access to the bridge.

Source: APE-MPE, Reuters, AFP.