An armed group attacked special forces police on Saturday in a town in northern Macedonia in a clash that killed five police officers and injured more than 30, officials said, amid a political crisis that has raised concern about the stability of the Balkan nation.
Macedonian Minister of the Interior Gordana Jankulovska told reporters late on Saturday that the police casualties occurred during a sweep operation in Diva Naselba, a neighborhood in western Kumanovo. Police had come under attack from automatic guns and bombs.
A weeping Jankulovska said the five slain police officers were “heroes who gave their lives today for the Republic of Macedonia.’’
Photo: EPA
“[The] terrorist group,” which had entered Macedonia from an unspecified neighboring country, planned to “use the current political situation to perform attacks on state institutions,” she said, adding that more than 20 members of the armed group had surrendered, but the police operation is still ongoing because other attackers have refused to give up.
Some of the attackers had been killed, Jankulovska said, without specifying the number.
She was not able to confirm whether there were any civilian casualties.
Saturday’s clashes come as Macedonia is grappling with its deepest political crisis since its independence from former Yugoslavia in 1991. The government and the opposition have accused each other of planning to destabilize the nation to take or preserve power, and some analysts fear leaders on both sides are ready to provoke ethnic clashes as leverage.
Kumanovo is an ethnically mixed town about 40km northeast of the capital, Skopje, near the border with Kosovo and Serbia. The region was the center of hostilities between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces during the ethnic conflict in 2001.
Ethnic Albanians, who make up a quarter of Macedonia’s 2 million people, took up arms in 2001 demanding more rights. The conflict ended after six months with a Western-brokered peace deal that granted more rights to the minority group.
Political analyst Saso Ordanovski said in a debate broadcast on Saturday on local TV station 24 Vesti that the armed group in Kumanovo are mercenaries.
“Somebody has paid them to change the subject on what is going on at the moment in the country,” Ordanovski said.
The EU delegation in Macedonia appealed for calm and said in a statement it is waiting “for facts to be established by the relevant authorities.”
The US embassy in Skopje issued a statement saying it “deeply regret[s] the loss of life.”
“We are following the situation and are in close contact with the authorities and political leaders. We urge citizens to remain calm and allow the facts to be established,” the statement said.
Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov urgently ended his visit to Russia and traveled back home. The president’s office said he would call for a meeting of the Macedonian National Security Council in relation to the latest developments.
Serbia reacted by sending reinforcements of special police to the border region, apparently fearing a possible spillover of violence.
Jankulovska said the armed group was “sheltered in the houses of supporters.”
On Friday, thousands of opposition supporters took part in a nationwide protests against alleged police brutality in Macedonia.
The protests started after Macedonian opposition leader Zoran Zaev — citing illegally recorded conversations — accused the government of trying to cover up the 2011 police killing of a 22-year-old man.
The recordings are part of a series of wiretaps Zaev has been releasing that he says reveal corruption at the highest-level of government in the country of 2 million people, including mismanagement of funds and criminal prosecutions of opponents.
Zaev on Saturday appealed for calm, but had earlier called for a large anti-government protest to be held on Sunday.
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