4 police hurt in Macedonia in clash with 'armed group'

Macedonia on Saturday accused gunmen "from a neighbouring state" of planning a "terrorist attack" and injuring four police officers, three of them seriously, in clashes early Saturday.

The clashes took place during a dawn police raid in the northern town of Kumanovo after the authorities "received information on the movement of an armed group," a police spokesman told reporters.

Local media said the operation targeted a part of the town populated mainly by ethnic Albanians.

"There were plans for an attack on the state institutions by people who illegally entered (Macedonia) from a neighbouring state," police spokesman Ivo Kotevski told reporters.

The gunmen, who were well-armed, had supporters in Kumanovo for a "terrorist attack," he added.

The spokesman did not elaborate from which country the group allegedly entered Macedonia, but local media hinted at neighbouring Kosovo, populated mostly by ethnic Albanians. In 2001, ethnic Albanian rebels staged an insurgency in the region.

Kotevski said that during the Kumanovo police operation, officers met "violent resistance" from snipers, grenades and from automatic weapons.

Three policemen who sustained serious injuries were taken to hospital in the capital Skopje, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the south, Dragan Tasevski, a hospital doctor in Kumanovo, told reporters. The fourth was treated locally.

Meanwhile, the US embassy in Skopje issued a statement voicing condolences to the "families of the people killed and to those injured." Contacted by AFP police said it could not comment on the information until the operation was over.

Local media also reported deaths and injuries, including among civilians, but there was no immediate independent confirmation.

Armoured police vehicles were deployed across Kumanovo, with officers clad in bullet-proof jackets as helicopters hovered overhead, according to an AFP photographer.

Sporadic exchanges of gunfire could be heard in the area on early Saturday afternoon as police said the operation was still ongoing.

The incident comes less then three weeks after around 40 ethnic Albanians from neighbouring Kosovo briefly seized control of a police station on Macedonia's northern border, demanding the creation of an Albanian state in Macedonia.

Ethnic Albanians make up around one quarter of Macedonia's 2.1 million people.

The 2001 conflict ended with an agreement providing more rights to the community, but ties between ethnic Macedonians and Albanians remain scarred.

The former Yugoslav republic is also battling an economic crisis, with unemployment running at 28 percent.