A police checkpoint manned by Serb officers came under fire in northern Kosovo overnight.
Police said the shots appeared to have been fired from the ethnic Albanian village of Kosutovo, north of the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, from a semi-automatic weapon. Officers fired back.
The checkpoint is located between Albanian and Serb villages in a strip of northern Kosovo dominated by Serbs, who oppose last month's declaration of independence by the territory's 90 per cent Albanian majority.
Danish soldiers with Nato's 16,000-strong Kosovo Force (Kfor) force man a checkpoint near the police position.
The north - home to 50,000 of Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs - has violently rejected the secession of Serbia's former province, run by the United Nations since a 1999 Nato air war to halt Serb ethnic cleansing forced the pullout of Serb forces. Riots in the Serb stronghold of north Mitrovica last week killed one UN police officer.
Some 223 Irish soldiers, drawn mainly from the 2nd Eastern Brigade, are preparing for overseas service with Kfor. They will help protect 81 villages.