NATO announced that about 600 British soldiers will be deployed in Kosovo to strengthen the bloc's presence in the former Serbian province, which witnessed armed clashes last week.

The soldiers are from a reserve force placed at the disposal of "KFOR" (the NATO force deployed in Kosovo) at the end of the week, to confront developments and renewed tension in the region.

NATO spokesman Dylan White said: "The United Kingdom is deploying about 200 soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment to join a British unit of 400 soldiers currently training in Kosovo, and this will be followed by additional reinforcements from other allies."

He added, "The decision comes in the wake of the violent attack on the Kosovo police on September 24 and the increasing tensions in the region," without explicitly referring to a statement issued by Washington on Friday in which it warned of a Serbian military buildup on the Kosovo border.

White said that NATO again called for calm on Sunday and called on Belgrade and Pristina to resume dialogue as soon as possible as “the only way to achieve sustainable peace.”

Last Sunday, a Kosovo police officer was killed in an ambush carried out by a group of Serbs, followed by gunfire between police special forces and the armed group that killed three of the gunmen who had taken refuge in an Orthodox monastery in the village of Banjska near the border.

The incident is the most serious escalation in Kosovo in years.
Serbia does not recognize Kosovo's independence declared in 2008, after a bloody war during the 1990s between Serbian forces and Albanian rebels that ended with NATO intervention.