Kosovo police have fired tear gas to disperse protesters who set alight their cars demanding the removal of a barricade on a bridge linking ethnic Albanians and Serbs.
Two officers and two photographers were hurt as about 1000 ethnic Albanian protesters pelted a police cordon with stones in the divided northern town of Mitrovica on Sunday.
Anti-riot police, backed by NATO-led peacekeepers, responded with tear gas and sealed off the bridge to prevent demonstrators crossing to the northern, Serb half of the town.
The protesters later set on fire two Kosovo police cars and two vehicles belonging to the European Union rule of law mission, EULEX.
They were angry over a three-year-old barricade put up by ethnic Serbs on the bridge over the river Ibar that separates the two communities.
Until last week, it was an unsightly mess of earth and concrete blocks - a largely symbolic barrier that symbolised the angry refusal of ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo to merge with the rest of the country after it declared independence in 2008.
The pile was removed on Wednesday only to be replaced a few hours later by a line of plant pots with small fir trees, and the bridge was covered with a layer of soil which the local Serb mayor said would be used to create a "peace park".
The river separates the ethnic Albanians in the southern half of the town from ethnic Serbs in the north.
The 40,000 Serbs of north Kosovo have strongly resisted an EU-brokered deal signed between Kosovo and Serbia last year that accepted Kosovan control of the region. They have refused to recognise the government in Pristina and accused Belgrade of betrayal.
But left with few options, they grudgingly took part in Kosovo parliamentary elections for the first time earlier this month.
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