3 Injured in New Macedonia inter-ethnic violence

Three people were injured in violent incidents in Macedonia overnight, reflecting rising tensions between Macedonian and ethnic Albanian communities, police said Saturday. Three Macedonian teenagers, aged between 15 and 17, were attacked by four people, one of whom had a metal bar, in the capital Skopje, a police statement said. Two of the teenagers were hospitalized with head injuries. According to media reports that police refused to immediately confirm the attackers were ethnic Albanians. In another incident in Tetovo, a northwestern town with an ethnic Albanian majority, a police officer was hospitalized with a head injury after intervening to protect two men being attacked by a group of some six people, a police statement said. Police did not elaborate on the ethnicity of those involved in the incident. On Thursday, 10 people, both Macedonians and Albanians, were injured in a series of violent incidents in Skopje. Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska warned afterwards that, "It cannot be excluded that someone wants inter-ethnic relations to deteriorate." Relations between the two communities have improved, but remain scarred by an armed conflict in 2001 between Macedonian security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels. A peace deal was signed in August 2001, when ethnic Albanians, who make up some 25 percent of Macedonia's population of two million, were given improved rights. Earlier this month, some 5,000 ethnic Albanians gathered in the western town of Gostivar to protest the killing of two of their kin by a Macedonian policeman in an apparently non-ethnic-related incident.