Grenade hits Serb cafe in Kosovo

UN forces provide a barrier between Mitrovica's communities

A grenade attack on a Serb cafe in the ethnically divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica has injured nine people including a British UN policeman.

The cafe is close to the Ibar river which separates the ethnic Serb-run north of the town from the ethnic Albanian south.

Police detained a suspect who was said unofficially by UN and police sources to be an ethnic Albanian teenager.

Hundreds of Serbs gathered at a bridge afterwards to protest at the attack.

Hospital officials said two people were seriously injured by the blast while the British policeman was not thought to be badly hurt.

Those injured in the attack on the Dolce Vita cafe, which happened around 1900 (1700 GMT), are said to be seven Serbs, the Briton and a second foreigner whose nationality could not be immediately confirmed.

Flash-point

"Police arrested a person suspected to have committed the attack," a spokesman for the Kosovo Police Service told AFP in Pristina, without revealing the nationality of the suspect.

However, a source within the UN mission told AFP the suspect was a 16-year-old ethnic Albanian and a police source also told Reuters he was an ethnic Albanian teenager.

According to an unconfirmed report, two Albanians were later injured by the Serb protesters.

The town has seen some of the worst clashes between Kosovo's Albanians and its Serb minority since the war there ended in 1999.

The province is administered by the United Nations and hundreds of foreign troops and police patrol Mitrovica alone.

Recent talks between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians, who want formal independence from Serbia, failed to produce a breakthrough on a long-term political settlement.