History of Kosovska Mitrovica

ministration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) police were stationed there in large numbers to head off trouble. However, violence and harassment was often directed against members of the "wrong" ethnic community on both sides of the river, necessitating the presence of troops and police checkpoints around individual areas of the city and even in front of individual buildings.

On March 17, 2004, the drowning of an Albanian child in the river prompted major ethnic violence in the town and a Serbian teenager was killed. Demonstrations by thousands of angry Albanians and Serbs mobilized to stop them crossing the river degenerated into rioting and gunfire, leaving at least eight Albanians dead and at least 300 injured. The bloodshed sparked off the worst unrest in Kosovo seen since the end of the 1999 war (in which 11 Serbs were killed).

A Bosniak resident of southern KosovskaMitrovica was murdered after being overheard speaking the Bosnian language.

The local prison was the scene of an international incident on 18 April 2004 when Ahmad Mustafa Ibrahim, a Jordanian policeman working as a UN