A Kosovo Serb political party member has admitted to leading gunmen in a fatal clash with Kosovo police near the Serbian border, marking a significant escalation in the region.

A member of a major Kosovo Serb political party has admitted to leading a group of gunmen that clashed with Kosovo police earlier this week, his lawyer said Friday.

The killing of a Kosovo police officer and the ensuing gun battle at a monastery in a village close to the Serbian border marked one of the gravest escalations in the former breakaway province in years.

Three Serb gunmen were killed in an hours-long firefight with Kosovo police after they ambushed a patrol near the village of Banjska and later barricaded themselves at an Orthodox monastery.

Milan Radoicic, the long-serving vice president of the Srpska Lista party, said he led the group of heavily armed gunmen into the area in northern Kosovo in response to alleged repression against Serbs by the Pristina government.

Radoicic insisted that he had acted alone and without the support or consent of the Serbian government.

A member of a Kosovo police special unit is seen behind an armored vehicle’s door damaged by bullets as he stands guard in an area around the Banjska Monastery in Banjska, north Kosovo, some 15kms from the border with Serbia, on September 27, 2023. (Armend Nimani, AFP)

The killing of a Kosovo police officer in the ambush near the Serbian border was an “accident”, Radoicic wrote in a letter read aloud by his attorney Goran Petronijevic at a press conference in Belgrade on Friday.

“We are not terrorists, we are the freedom fighters of our people,” his letter stated, which included his resignation from Srpska Lista.

Earlier this week, Kosovo’s interior minister accused Radoicic of masterminding Sunday’s attack and released a video allegedly showing the suspect among a group of armed men at the Banjska monastery.

Kosovo’s government has accused Belgrade of backing the entire operation, with Prime Minister Albin Kurti writing on social media that the weapons and equipment used in Sunday’s attack were “made by Serbian state-owned military arms producers.”

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti speaks to the media after lighting a candle in memory of the Kosovo Police officer Afrim Bunjaku, who was killed by armed gunmen in the village of Banjska near the border with Serbia, during a candlelight vigil in Pristina on September 24, 2023. (Armend Nimani, AFP)

Radoicic, who is currently under US sanctions, has long been a major powerbroker among Serbs in Kosovo’s restive north.

Earlier Friday, Kosovo police fanned out again across the north as they conducted an operation that saw the special units raid properties linked to Radoicic.

Kosovo, a former province of Serbia that broke away and declared independence in 2008, a status Belgrade has refused to recognize, has long seen strained relations between its ethnic Albanian majority and its Serb minority population.

Katrine Dige Houmøller, with AFP