Stefanovic: Urgent meeting with EULEX and KFOR

BELGRADE – Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said Friday that he had requested an urgent meeting with representatives of EULEX and KFOR following an attack on police officers in the Ground Safety Zone in the Kursumlija municipality on Thursday.

“I expect that it (the meeting) will take place in Belgrade in the next few days,” Stefanovic said for Belgrade-based TV Pink.

The situation in Kursumlija after yesterday's “direct terrorist attack” and the murder of Gendarmerie officer Stevan Sindjelic is currently stable, said Stefanovic.

We sent additional police forces on the ground, and we have cooperation with EULEX and KFOR in terms of securing the entire region, he said.

We are working in cooperation with EULEX and KFOR to find the perpetrators, Stefanovic said, announcing strengthening penalties for assaults on police officers.

Stevan Sindjelic was wounded on Thursday around 3 a.m. on the territory of the village of Orlovac in the Kursumlija municipality, not far from the Merdare crossing on the administrative line between central Serbia and KiM.

Sindjelic was wounded in the head and succumbed to his wounds at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade during the night.

A team of Serbian Gendarmerie members were attacked while securing the site where several Albanians from KiM were spotted illegally felling trees by a patrol from the Kursumlija police station during a regular field visit on Wednesday.

Several people from the group opened fire at the police patrol, and the exchange of fire resulted in one ethnic Albanian getting killed and another wounded.

The forest thieves returned to the same place in the early hours on Thursday to retrieve their...