Sawt Falasteen - Serbia denies link to Kosovo canal blast amid heightened tensions

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has accused Serbia of masterminding what he called a "terrorist attack" Friday on the waterway near Zubin Potok, an area of Kosovo's volatile north dominated by ethnic Serbs.

The blast damaged a canal supplying water to hundreds of thousands of people and cooling systems at two coal-fired power plants that generate most of Kosovo's electricity.

Vucic fired back in an address to the nation on Sunday, saying the incident and the Kosovo accusations were "an attempt at a large and ferocious hybrid attack" on Serbia itself.

Belgrade's Kosovo office said the strike gave the Pristina government an excuse to crack down on ethnic Serbs in Kosovo.

"We have no connection with it," Vucic said of the attack.

He stopped short of directly accusing any individual or state of orchestrating the blast and said Serbian authorities had opened their own investigation.

Animosity between Serbia and Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority, has persisted since the end of a war between Belgrade's forces and ethnic Albania separatists in what was then a province of Serbia in the late 1990s.

Serbia has never recognised Kosovo 2008 declaration of independence.

Petar Petkovic, director of the Serbian government's Kosovo office, said the incident provided Prime Minister Kurti with a pretext to try to expel ethnic Serbs from northern Kosovo.

"What happened in the village of Varage gave Kurti an alibi to continue the attacks in the north of Kosovo... and to continue the policy of expulsion of the Serb people," Petkovic told public broadcaster RTS.

The United States has condemned the canal attack. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller posting on X: "We will support efforts to find and punish those responsible and appreciate all offers of support to that effort."

- Critical infrastructure -

Kosovo officials on Sunday announced measures to better protect critical infrastructure, with police and security forces conducting patrols.

"The Security Council has approved additional measures to strengthen security around critical facilities and services such as bridges, transformer stations, antennas, lakes, canals," the government said.

It was also stepping up cooperation between governing institutions and with international bodies "to prevent similar attacks in future", it said.

Kosovar authorities arrested several suspects on Saturday.

Kosovo police chief Gazmend Hoxha said that his office had seized "200 military uniforms, six grenade launchers, two rifles, a pistol, masks and knives" in the operation.

Fuelling tensions recently, Kurti's government has for months sought to dismantle a parallel system, backed by Belgrade, that provides social services and political offices for Kosovo's ethnic Serb minority.

Friday's attack followed violent incidents in northern Kosovo, including one in which hand grenades were hurled at a local council building and a police station this week.

Kosovo is to hold parliamentary elections on February 9.

X.Habash--SF-PST