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PRISTINA - A Russian soldier was wounded in a rash of overnight shooting attacks on NATO-led peacekeeping troops in Kosovo and 16 people were arrested, a KFOR spokesman said on Friday.
"KFOR is very concerned about the current attacks against the soldiers and people should be reminded that our soldiers have robust rules of engagement and the right to defend themselves," Major Jan Joosten said.
Peacekeepers have come under fire about 30 times since they deployed in Kosovo two months ago as Serbian security forces withdrew, but the overall rate of attacks has declined, he told a news conference in Pristina.
Russian soldiers were the targets at three of the seven KFOR checkpoints or patrols shot at overnight. Joosten said no one was apprehended in the attacks on the Russians and would not speculate on who the assailants were.
They were likely to have been ethnic Albanians, who accuse Russians of being pro-Serb and having fought as mercenaries in security forces which shelled and burned Kosovo's majority people out of their homes over a 16-month period.
Joosten said Russian troops came under small-arms fire at three checkpoints they maintain in southeast Kosovo, an ethnically mixed area of high Serb-Albanian tension near the provincial boundary with the rest of Serbia.
The Russians returned fire but the gunmen fled and no one was detained. One Russian soldier was wounded in the left thigh and evacuated to a nearby U.S. Army hospital.
U.S. troops run the southeast military zone of Kosovo but Russian troops guard some areas, including volatile Kosovska Kamenica near the boundary with the rest of Serbia.
As Joosten spoke, 3,000 ethnic Albanians in Kamenica staged what they said was a 14th straight day of anti-Russian demonstrations there. Russian soldiers patrolled nearby but there were no incidents, a Reuters photographer reported.
In the southeast town of Urosevac, U.S. KFOR soldiers protecting a Serb house were fired upon by "an unknown number of aggressors" at 10 p.m. (2000 GMT), Joosten said.
After a shootout, the attackers fled in a car which was followed by a KFOR helicopter as it sped towards the provincial capital Pristina 30 km (20 miles) north, he said.
One suspect was apprehended later at Pristina hospital, where he was being treated for severe gunshot wounds.
In the south-central town of Lipljan, KFOR troops arrested five unidentified people in a car stopped at a checkpoint in connection with a grenade explosion nearby two hours before.
Eight ethnic Albanians were arrested by German troops outside the southwest city of Prizren late on Thursday night soon after shots were fired over the top of a KFOR checkpoint.
The Germans seized five Kalashnikov assault rifles and ammunition found in the suspects' two cars.
An unidentified man was detained for shooting at a KFOR checkpoint from his house in the southwest town of Djakovica, and a KFOR patrol came under fire near Pec in the western military sector of Kosovo. One man was arrested.
Italian troops near Pec seized a cache of arms including 11 rifles, one anti-tank rocket, grenades and 3,400 rounds of ammunition. KFOR did not say whose arms they were.
"General security is getting better in Kosovo every day, but there are still some problems of course," Joosten said.
"We look forward to the introduction of (armed) international police to bring criminal activities down to an acceptable level."
About 3,100 armed U.N. police have been designated to restore civilian law enforcement in Kosovo on behalf of the interim U.N. administration, but they have been slow to arrive.