Kosovska Mitrovica - French troops clashed yesterday with hundreds of stone-throwing Serbs furious over an attempt by the peacekeepers to control access to one of the few remaining ethnically mixed quarters in this tense and divided town.
At least nine Serbs were injured, two of them seriously, in the riots that erupted as French gendarmes and soldiers deployed at a key intersection leading into a northern Mitrovica neighbourhood known as Little Bosnia, where a small number of ethnic Albanians live beside the Serb majority.
The Serbs, with women in the front lines, hurled stones at the French soldiers of the NATO-led peacekeeping force, who fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the mob.
