A LEADING Serb politician in northern Kosovo has beenshot dead, raising ethnic tensions in the region and halting EU-mediated talks between Kosovo and Serbia on the day they were due to resume.
Assailants opened fire on Oliver Ivanovic close to the offices of his political party in the Serb-controlled northern city of Mitrovica.
He was taken to a hospital but doctors were unable to save him.
Medics said Ivanovic received at least five gunshot wounds to his upper torso. The assailants escaped in a car that was later found burned out.
The Serb delegation at EU talks which were due to start in Brussels immediately left to return to Belgrade.
Delegation leader Marko Djuric said that “whoever is behind this attack ... whether they are Serb, Albanian or any other criminals, they must be punished”.
Ivanovic, 64, was one of the key politicians in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, a former Serbian province where tensions remain high a decade after it declared independence. Serbia does not recognise the independence of its former province and the killing is likely to raise tensions between ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs in the region.
A Kosovo court convicted Ivanovic of war crimes during the 1998-99 war. That verdict was overturned and a retrial was under way.
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