Serbia accused Albanian "terrorists" today of killing two of its policemen, and the UN refugee agency warned that the incident threatened to undermine fragile peace in the south of the country.
Two Serb policemen were killed and two others wounded in the attack late yesterday in the village of Muhovac in the Presevo Valley region of southern Serbia, a government official said.
It was the first serious clash in the remote and hilly area east of UN-governed Kosovo since a 16-month-long local Albanian guerrilla insurgency ended in May.
The Presevo Valley lies north of Macedonia, where government forces have clashed sporadically with a different Albanian guerrilla group over the last five months.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, who rushed to the scene of the killing, said Serbia would fight "terrorism" with all available means, adding that police would undertake house-to-house searches watched by international monitors.
"What happened last night...is not an outburst of nationalism or extremism. It is an obvious form of terrorism and we will use all means available to deal with terrorists," the official Tanjug news agency quoted Covic as saying.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) strongly condemned the attack on a police post as a "grave criminal act" threatening to undermine hard-won stability in the Presevo Valley, which has a large Albanian population.
"This is a cowardly act which does not serve the people of southern Serbia, many of whom have finally been able to return to their homes after nearly two years of displacement in Kosovo," said Mr Eric Morris, special UNHCR envoy in the Balkans.
The refugee agency added in a statement it was concerned the incident would dampen its refugee return efforts in southern Serbia. About 5,000 Albanian villagers have returned to their homes since peace returned less than three months ago.
Mr Miodrag Miljkovic, a spokesman for a government-run press office in the regional center of Bujanovac, told reporters that policemen Mr Dragan Brcarevic and Mr Miodrag Mladenovic, both from the eastern Serbian town of Kladovo, died in the attack.
"Two were wounded, one of them seriously", he said.
A police statement said Albanian "terrorists" using automatic rifles attacked police performing regular duties at around 10:30 p.m. local time yesterday.
A guerrilla group known as the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) agreed in May to disarm under a NATO-brokered deal in return for political and economic measures to benefit the region's large Albanian community.
A leading former guerrilla official said the disbanded group was not involved in yesterday’s incident. "We have no idea what happened, the UCPMB has nothing to do with this," the official told reporters in Albanian-dominated Kosovo.