Gun battle in ethnic Albanian region deepens Macedonian crisis

Macedonia said on Sunday its police had wiped out a group of ethnic Albanian “terrorists” in a day-long gun battle that left at least 22 people dead at a moment of deep political crisis in the former Yugoslav republic. NATO, which dragged Macedonia from the brink of civil war in 2001, called for a “transparent investigation” of what went on when heavily armed police entered a mainly Albanian neighborhood in the northern town of Kumanovo before dawn on Saturday.

This is not a Macedonian-Albanian conflict, but a conflict between people who mean no good to the state and people who uphold the state.

Conservative Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski

The government said eight police and 14 members of an “armed group” had been killed in the ensuing gun battle, describing the gunmen as former rebel commanders from neighboring Kosovo, which broke from Serbia in war in 1999 and inspired an ethnic Albanian insurgency in Macedonia two years later. Police said the gunmen had been plotting to attack civilian and state targets this month, just as a political crisis rocking the government threatens to climax in an opposition rally called for May 17.