Kosovo's municipal election day, hailed by UN chief Bernard Kouchner as the most peaceful since the end of the province's war, was nevertheless marked by some violence and attempts at ballot tampering, officials told AFP Sunday.
In one incident in the village of Magura, near Pristina, members of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) used the cover of a power cut to enter a polling station in a bid to steal ballot boxes, said one official, who asked not to be named. The incident took place at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) and was foiled.
The KPC is a uniformed civil defense militia set up to replace the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Although officially apolitical, many of its members are known to be close to the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) of Hashim Thaci, the former political leader of the guerrilla force.
In Obilic, three miles (five kilometers) northwest of the capital, UN police arrested a Kosovo Albanian man at 1:50 pm (1150 GMT) for attempting to interfere with the ballot, officials said.
In Srbica, a former stronghold of the PDK in their Drenica valley heartland, police intervened after party members attempted to "influence" other voters on their way to the polls.
In a later incident, several police officers were pushed through a plate glass window by a crowd of voters, but no-one was seriously hurt.
At 1:30 pm in the divided northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica police prevented local people from attempting to hide ballot papers.
In the village of Selograzde, near the southwestern town of Prizren, a UN police officer on duty near a polling station was attacked and had his gun stolen when he went to the aid of a local member of the Kosovo Police Service. The gun was later recovered and three Kosovo Albanians arrested.
In the southwestern town of Kamenice another Kosovo Albanian was arrested after shots were fired near a polling station, officials said.
Kosovo's Serb minority, who boycotted the poll, were also the victims of two attacks.
Two men, one of them reportedly speaking Albanian, attacked and stabbed an elderly Serb woman, seriously injuring her, at 4:45 pm in a robbery in the village of Bresje near the ethnically mixed town of Kosovo Polje.
And in Vitina, southwest Kosovo, at 4:20 pm a grenade was thrown at the home of a Kosovo Serb couple. They were uninjured in the attack, which follows a pattern of anti-Serb violence that has continued across Kosovo since June last year.
In all 26 arrests were made across Kosovo, Saturday -- PRISTINA (AFP)
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