Earlier on Thursday, local media reported that more than 200 Kosovar armed special unit police officers, accompanied by armored equipment, had entered and blocked the Serb-Inhabited Kosovska Mitrovica city in the north of Kosovo. Kosovar Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said the increased presence of police forces in Kosovska Mitrovica is necessary to ensure public safety following "repeated violent attacks by criminal groups against our institutions and citizens in that area."
"Belgrade will consider, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1244, the return of up to 1,000 of our security forces to the territory of Kosovo and Metohija... [Serbian] President Aleksandar Vucic has repeated many times that there will never be pogroms again. I think this has not been comprehensively understood in the West by those who have to talk sense into Pristina," Petkovic told an extraordinary press conference.
Petkovic added that some 350 police and special forces officers, equipped with heavy armor and automatic arms, have entered Kosovska Mitrovica and "literally occupied all of northern Kosovska Mitrovica to hunker down in parts of the city with an ethnically mixed population."
The official also said that Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti "continues to carry out actions to occupy northern Kosovo and Metohija."
On Tuesday, representatives of the Kosovo Electoral commission, accompanied by police, forced their way into and vandalized municipal election commissions in the Serb-populated towns of Zubin Potok, Leposavic, and northern Kosovska Mitrovica. Air-raid sirens and firecrackers were heard throughout the towns, and videos of concerned citizens circulated on social networks.
Local portals then reported that police had defused an unexploded grenade at the Kosovska Mitrovica commission premises. Kurti said afterward that he would increase police activity.
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani had previously scheduled early municipal elections in the Serb-inhabited north of Kosovo for December 18. Serbian political representatives, who had previously left all structures of the self-proclaimed republic in protest, declared a boycott.