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

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

The approximately 50,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo do not recognize its declaration of independence from Serbia and consider Belgrade their capital.

Serb residents of the area also refuse to accept the results of April’s municipal elections, given that turnout was only 3.5%.

The mayorsthey have to leave the area because they don’t represent anyone” said on Wednesday the vice-president of the Serbian List, the largest party of the Serbs in Kosovo, Igor Simic, speaking to the Reuters agency.

Lulzim Hetemi, the Albanian mayor of Leposavic, has been in his office since early Monday morning and NATO soldiers are guarding the town hall, which is surrounded by barbed wire. The mayors of Zvečan and Zubin Potok work from their homes.

In Zvečan, a few dozen Serbs gathered again earlier today outside the town hall, according to an AFP journalist. The demonstrators were however fewer compared to the previous days.

Barbed wire and metal bars have also been placed around the city hall of this city. Soldiers of the peacekeeping force KFOR are guarding the building while others have been deployed on road axes leading to the center of Zvečan, at the request of the Serbian List, on the occasion of the fact that “masked men” threw stones at two police cars on Wednesday. One police officer was injured and the windows of the two vehicles were broken, according to Kosovo’s interior ministry.

Demonstration in Mitrovica

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

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

The police appealed to the citizens not to come to the demonstration for “not to add fuel to the fire».

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