Macedonian Police Kill Four Gunmen in Shootout

The shootout occurred Tuesday night when a special unit of the police stopped a van after being tipped off that it was transporting illegal weapons, police spokesman Ivo Kotevski told Balkan Insight.

An armed group then began shooting at the police, which returned fire and killed four persons, according to police reports. The police suffered no casualties.

Three of the four killed gunmen have now been identified based on identity documents recovered at the scene, police have confirmed. Two of those killed were Macedonian citizens and one was from Kosovo. The Macedonian residents were from the villages of Grchec and Merovo, while the Kosovar was from Pristina.

Police officials say that the men killed were engaged in the illegal transportation of weapons from Kosovo to Macedonia, adding that the preliminary investigation shows that those killed were known to police previously for involvement in illegal activities.

According to the police, the arms recovered in the incident varied from old to new. The police found TNT explosives, hand grenades, various mines, and mortar rounds. Uniforms and emblems of the National Liberation Army, NLA, were also found.

"At this phase I would not link the two incidents," Macedonian Minister of Police Gordana Jankulovska told media today, referring to the recent discovery of weapons caches in the same area of Macedonia. "The police are working on the case and are still on the ground," she said, adding that violence will not be tolerated and that the police have the situation under control.

So far it is not clear whether this incident is linked with that in late April when the police in the same border region with Kosovo found a large weapons stash and clashed with the uniformed gunmen who were guarding it.

The April incident raised security concerns of possible renewed activity of armed groups in that region. Macedonia’s northwest and north suffered a six month long armed conflict in 2001 when ethnic Albanian insurgents clashed with state security forces.

The hostilities ended the same year with the signing of a peace deal that guaranteed greater rights to the Albanian community in Macedonia, which makes up one quarter of the country's population.