A leading Serb politician has been shot dead in a drive-by shooting in Kosovo this morning, it has emerged.
Gunmen opened fire at Oliver Ivanovic from a car shooting him five times in front of the offices of his Citizens’ Initiative Party in the northern town of Mitrovica this morning.
Doctors battled to save the 64-year-old, one of the key politicians in the Serb-dominated region, but he was declared dead at 9.30am.
A Kosovo court convicted Ivanovic of war crimes during the 1998-99 war. That verdict was overturned and a retrial had been underway.
The attack, on the very day that Serbia and Kosovo had resumed talks on normalising ties after a hiatus of more than a year. It is likely to heighten ethnic tensions in Kosovo, a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008.
Leading Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic (pictured) has been shot dead in a drive-by shooting in Kosovo, it has emerged
Medics say Ivanovic received at least five gunshot wounds to his upper torso when shot by unknown assailants. A burnt-out car believed to have been used in the attack has been found by police.
Marko Djuric, the Serbian government’s official dealing with Kosovo, described the incident as a ‘a criminal, terrorist act against the entire Serbian people’.
He added that ‘whoever is behind this attack … whether they are Serb, Albanian or any other criminals, they must be punished.’
It was ‘an attempt to push the Serbian people into chaos, to push Serbia into chaos’, he added.
Kosovo remains tense, a decade after declaring independence from Serbia in 2008. Serbia does not recognize the split and EU-mediated talks have been underway in a bid to normalize ties.
About 10,000 people died in the 1998-99 war between Serb forces and Kosovo ethnic Albanian rebels.
In a protest against the killing, Serbia said it would quit the ongoing round of a European Union-sponsored dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina on the normalisation of relations that was due to take place in Brussels.
A Kosovo court convicted Ivanovic (centre) of war crimes during the 1998-99 war. That verdict was overturned and a retrial had been underway
‘I can confirm that Oliver Ivanovic has died from gun shots. Investigators are on the scene,’ Shyqyri Syla, a state prosecutor in Mitrovica, told Reuters.
Known as a moderate among Kosovo Serb politicians, Oliver Ivanovic had been one of the chief interlocutors for NATO, United Nations and European Union officials based in Kosovo after the war.
In 2016 he was found guilty of war crimes linked to the killings of four ethnic Albanians during the war and was jailed for nine years. But after a retrial was ordered he was released last year and awaiting a new trial.
Some 40,000-50,000 ethnic Serbs live in northern Kosovo, rejecting integration with the mainly Albanian state since it declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
Relations between Serbia and Kosovo have been tense since 2008, but in 2013 both parties agreed to participate in the EU-sponsored negotiations on normalising relations, a condition for both to progress on their way towards membership in the bloc.
Ivanovic lived in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica.
The Serbian news agency Tanjug quoted his lawyer as saying he was shot five times.
‘He was taken to the hospital immediately, the doctors tried to revive him, but he could not be saved,’ lawyer Nebojsa Vlajic said.