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KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia - A French soldier was seriously hurt in clashes between peacekeepers and ethnic Albanians trying to storm into the Serb-dominated part of a major Kosovo town on Monday, a French military spokesman said.
Leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) subsequently dispersed the crowd confronting the French peacekeeping force at a bridge linking the Albanian and Serb sides of the province's third largest town.
The French contingent's chief information officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Tanguy, said the soldier was taken to the French military hospital "in serious condition" with a cracked skull.
He said Albanian demonstrators had hurled two big stones at the soldier and hit him with a wooden stick. He was rushed by ambulance to hospital.
It was the third straight day of disturbances between ethnic Albanian crowds apparently organised by the KLA and French soldiers trying to preserve peace in Kosovska Mitrovica.
Witnesses said the soldier was knocked unconscious during a melee as a mob of around 150 men tried to charge across the bridge to north Mitrovica as soldiers strung barbed wire across it.
Eyewitnesses said the bridge was later reopened.
As over the weekend, a crowd of ethnic Albanians chanting separatist guerrilla slogans massed on the south side of the Ibar River bridge in hopes of slipping past French troops who have been curbing free movement to preserve peace in the city.
The U.N. deputy chief representative for north Kosovo, Mary Pak Silvera, had tried to address the crowd, saying peacekeepers were having talks with Dr Bajram Rexepi, an ethnic Albanian named major of Mitrovica by a self-styled Kosovo Provisional Government formed by the KLA.
But the crowd refused to listen to her.
Scuffling began around 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) after a French soldier punched an ethnic Albanian man aggressively trying to push forward at the head of the mob.
After a few minutes of punching and kicking, French soldiers thrust the crowd to one side of the bridge entrance and held them there, on the edge of a plaza lined with cafes.
Previously, the French had allowed the demonstrators to stand nose-to-nose with them across the end of the bridge. The new form of crowd control seemed designed to keep them out of sight of Serbs gathered on the north end of the bridge.
Ethnic Albanians involved in the disturbances since Saturday say they only want to be able to cross to north Mitrovica freely to reclaim homes seized by Serbs in a 16-month conflict or to visit relatives from whom they have been cut off.
But French officials say the crowds appear to have been organised by the KLA to seek confrontation with Serbs in the hope of taking control of north Mitrovica and driving non-Albanians out in revenge for past atrocities.
Kosovo's interim U.N. administration and KFOR peace force say Mitrovica can be reunified only through a political agreement between the two sides that would guarantee free movement, return of refugees and property rights for all.