The European security organisation, the OSCE, is overseeing a truce agreed in Kosovo on Sunday amid warnings that the international mission in the Serbian province may be brought to an end if violence continues.

The truce comes after four days of fighting between Serbian security forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the northern Podujevo region.

At least thirteen people have been reported killed in what the head of the international mission, William Walker, described as the most serious breach of a ceasefire agreed in October.

Mr Walker said his monitors would carefully observe the truce to determine whether it was likely to endure.

The OSCE, which has already deployed more than five-hundred observers in Kosovo, threatened on Sunday to reconsider the future of the mission if violence continued.