2nd LD Writethru: Armed group takes over Macedonian police station demanding an "independent state"

A group of 40 armed, masked people forcibly took over a police station in the Macedonian border village of Goshince early Tuesday morning, Macedonian police confirmed.

The assailants called themselves members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and disarmed the four police officers on duty. The armed people declare they were forming an independent state.

"The attackers started beating one of the officers and they tied up the other three with handcuffs. They threatened them with the words: 'We are KLA and nobody will save you, neither the Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski nor the leader of the coalition ruling party Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) in Macedonia, Ali Ahmeti. We demand our own independent state and we do not recognize the Ohrid Framework Agreement. Nobody can come here anymore. If someone does, he will be executed'," Ivo Kotveski, spokesperson for the Macedonian ministry of the interior, told Xinhua.

The attackers recorded the whole operation on camera. The four officers were given half an hour to leave the police station before being killed, but three of them were tied up. The one who was not tied up managed to flee the station on foot.

The police operation to reclaim the station is underway. The Macedonian ministry of the interior is considering this attack as a "serious terrorist act."

According to initial information from the Macedonian Ministry of the Interior, the attackers came from neighboring Kosovo, but additional evidence on this is still being obtained. Goshince is a small place in the Lipkovo municipality, northern Macedonia.

Lipkovo municipality was one of the main areas where, in 2001, there was an armed conflict between Macedonian security forces and insurgents from the so-called People's Liberation Army, affiliated with the KLA. The conflict ended with the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, a document guaranteeing political and civil rights to Albanians and the other minorities in Macedonia.

According to experts, repeating the 2001 crisis in Macedonia is yet unlikely.

"We can't compare it to 2001 because this is just a criminal gang acting in Goshince and it doesn't have support from official structures in Kosovo. Their only goal is to increase the inter-ethnic divide between Macedonians and Albanians and to intimidate the local population," security expert Blagoja Markovski told Xinhua here.

In recent months, KLA has claimed responsibility for two attacks on the government building here. First in October last year, and again on April 10, unknown attackers launched grenades on the building. Two of them hit the facade and one exploded near the government building. No one was hurt in the incidents, but the police have not yet managed to find the attackers.

After both incidents, the so-called KLA has issued written statements regarding their responsibility for the attacks, claiming that they do not recognize the Ohrid Framework Agreement because they are not satisfied with its implementation. Enditem