Macedonia Busts 'Terrorism' Suspects in Armed Swoop

In the operation launched on Thursday morning in villages close to the Kosovo border, police arrested at least five people suspected of providing logistical help to the armed ethnic Albanian group that fought a bloody battle with security forces in Kumanovo in northern Macedonia in May.

Heavily-armed police made the arrests in the ethnic Albanian-populated villages of Brest, Malino and Otlja. Police said there were no incidents during the operation.

"Those suspected of involvement in terrorist organisations are being brought before a pre-trial judge. The public prosecutor in charge has proposed that the judge order detention," the state prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The exact number and identities of those arrested are not yet known.

A two-day-long shootout between the police and the armed group in ethnically-mixed Kumanovo from May 9-10 left 22 people dead, including eight police officers. The police said they were seeking a group of well-armed 'terrorists' who had been planning attacks in Macedonia.

The shootout came against a backdrop of a deep political crisis in Macedonia revolving around opposition claims that Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski ordered the illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people. Some critics accused the authorities of plotting violence to distract attention from the ongoing crisis.

Days after the carnage, Macedonian Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska and secret police Chief Saso Mijalkov resigned, although they insisted it was not related to the Kumanovo case.

More than four months after the clashes in Kumanovo, questions still remain about who was behind the armed group, what its political goals were and what kind of attacks they were planning.

Suspicions that the shootout was a...