About 30 armed men have holed up in a monastery and are surrounded by police in northern Kosovo, in an area where one policeman was killed and another wounded early this morning in a shootout outside the predominantly Serb village of Bainsko. announced the Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti.

“There are at least 30 professional armed soldiers or policemen who are currently surrounded by our police forces and I am calling on them to surrender,” Kurti told reporters in Pristina. He also showed pictures of armed men in the courtyard of a monastery.

Kosovo authorities have closed all border crossings leading to Serbia

According to the official announcement, in the early hours of Sunday, a patrol of the border police of Kosovo noticed that two trucks which did not have license plates were placed vertically on a road leading to the village of Bainsko. He called for reinforcements and when they arrived but three patrol cars were attacked with guns and grenades from the direction of the village. An exchange of fire followed, in which two police officers were injured, one of whom died a short time later, according to the official announcement.

The Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti called the armed attack against the police a “terrorist act” and blamed “criminal groups controlled by Belgrade”.

The president of Kosovo Viosa Osmani he hastily returns from New York where he participated in the UN General Assembly. Osmani in an online post also blamed “Serbian criminal gangs” for the policeman’s death and claimed that they “have the political, financial and logistical support of official Belgrade.”

As of this morning, the Kosovo authorities have closed all border crossings in the north leading to Serbia.