'Kosovo is under attack': President Osmani blames Serbia for deadly violence

Kosovo's president Vjosa Osmani has accused Serbia and its president Aleksandar Vucic of being behind a shootout between armed men and Kosovar police in the north of the country last weekend, in the worst violence in the restive area in years.

Kosovo authorities said police fought around 30 heavily-armed Serbs who stormed the quiet village of Banjska on Sunday and barricaded themselves into a Serbian Orthodox monastery. Three attackers and one police officer were killed.

"Kosovo is under attack," Osmani told Reuters in an interview at her office on Thursday.

"The (armed) group simply exercised the intentions and the motives of Serbia as a country and Vucic as the leader."

The gunbattle has prompted new international concern over stability in Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority and declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

Serbia and Vucic have denied accusations of involvement. No group has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack or explain the motives of the gunmen.

Belgrade, which hasn't recognized Kosovo's independence, accuses the country of inciting violence through mistreatment of ethnic Serb residents, an allegation denied by Pristina.

Osmani said Serbia still has territorial claims against Kosovo and was acting to accomplish a 'Crimea model' by creating tensions in Kosovo's north where some 50,000 local Serbs still see Belgrade as their capital and reject rule from Pristina.

Russia seized and illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014, and Kosovo authorities fear Serbia could carve away the northern part of Kosovo.

'Talks can't continue'

Kosovo's government has published what it says are facts that show the group was trained, armed and received other support from the Belgrade government and security agencies.

Osmani said that similar attacks may be repeated again in the near future and asked the international community to do everything possible to stop Serbia supporting such groups.

Kosovo and Serbia have been in talks for more than a decade on normalising relations, in a process of mediation led by the European Union.

Early this year they agreed on a deal proposed by the EU, but since then they have not been able to agree on how to implement it.

Osmani said talks between the two cannot continue as before.

On Sunday police displayed an array of weapons and ammunition they said had been seized, including former Yugoslav army assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, mortars, anti-tank rocket launchers, hand grenades, land mines and drones.

Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti said police had found weapons worth 5 million euros, "sufficient for hundreds of fighters".