Kosovo Serb leader dies in a hail of bullets in front of his office

BELGRADE: A prominent Kosovo Serb leader, Oliver Ivanovic, was shot dead by an unidentified attacker in front of his office in Mitrovica yesterday, regional TV N1 reported.

He was transported to a local hospital with four gunshot wounds to the chest, but died from his injuries, according to his lawyer Nebojsa Vlajic.

Police were out in force in Mitrovica, a town that remains a hotspot of ethnic tensions between the majority Albanians and the minority Serbs. There was no immediate information about possible suspects.

According to initial media reports, there were no witnesses to the shooting and Ivanovic was found lying in the street.

Kosovo is a former Serbian province with a mostly Albanian population. It was the scene of an Albanian insurgency and a subsequent war marked by mass atrocities, mostly targeting the population which led Nato to intervene against Belgrade’s forces in 1999.

Nato expelled Serb-armed forces from Kosovo, paving the way for its declaration of independence a decade ago.

In 2016, Ivanovic was found guilty at a war crimes tribunal of involvement in the murder of Albanians in the town in a verdict that was later overturned.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic reacted to the killing by scheduling a national security council meeting, while the official in charge of Kosovo, Marko Djuric, said that Belgrade will leave the EU-brokered normalisation talks with Kosovo.