The NATO-led international force in Kosovo -- K-FOR -- is to hold military exercises in the province.

The force says it wants to demonstrate to the Serb and ethnic Albanian communities that its peacekeeping troops are ready to respond to any contingency.

A BBC correspondent in Kosovo says the exercises -- due to take place next Monday -- are intended as a show of force, to warn both communities not to disrupt the peace process.

They were planned before the recent increase in violence in the divided town of Kosovoska Mitrovica.

The United Nations says that nearly five-hundred ethnic Albanians have left their homes in the predominantly-Serb northern areas of Mitrovica in recent days.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service