Serbs opposed to the independence of Kosovo clashed today with UN police and NATO troops, who came under fire, in the worst violence since Kosovo's Albanian majority broke away from Serbia one month ago.
A Serbian party leader said Nato was behaving like the Nazi occupiers of World War Two and Serbia's caretaker prime minister said his country and its ally Russia were discussing joint moves to stop "all forms of violence against Kosovo Serbs".
But a Nato spokesman warned alliance forces would not back down in the face of organised mob violence.
Nato said its troops came under automatic gunfire in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica in clashes which began after UN special police backed by Nato peacekeepers stormed a UN court that had been seized by Serbs on Friday.
A Serb hospital director said three Serbs were seriously hurt, one shot through the head "by a sniper". A Nato spokesman said warning shots were fired into the air, not into the midst of rioters.
Serb media reports said about 70 civilians were injured in the clashes, in addition to two dozen UN police and a dozen members of the Nato-led KFOR peacekeeping force.
KFOR troops secured the area. But the violence underscored fears in the West that Kosovo is headed inexorably for violent ethnic partition.
" Nato condemns in the strongest form the violence we have seen in northern Kosovo today," Nato spokesman James Appathurai said. "KFOR will respond firmly to any acts of violence, as is its mandate from the United Nations," he said.
But Serbia blamed the UN and Nato for heavy-handed action.
Its caretaker prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, said in a statement that Serbia and Russia, which has backed Belgrade over Kosovo, were consulting on joint steps to stop "violence against Kosovo Serbs".
He condemned the use of force against Serbs who were opposing the setting-up of a "false state" and he accused NATO of "implementing a policy of force against Serbia".
President Boris Tadic, recalling the March 17th, 2004, Albanian riots in which 19 people were killed and hundreds of Serb homes burned down, warned of the risk of provoking a fresh Albanian "pogrom" against Kosovo's 120,000 minority Serbs.