Violence kills 22 as Macedonia police battle 'terrorist' group

At least 22 people have been killed in violent clashes in Macedonia in what the government described as an antiterrorist operation against foreign forces seeking to destabilise the country.

Gunfire broke out in Kumanovo, an ethnically mixed town 30km northeast of Skopje, the capital, at 5am on Saturday morning as police launched the offensive in a part of the town heavily populated by ethnic Albanians.

Authorities said eight police officers and 14 armed men were killed in clashes involving a terror group armed with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Local journalists said the operation concluded on Sunday and that 30 suspects had been arrested.

"They [police] fought together against an exceptionally dangerous terrorist organisation that was a major threat to our state, and especially to the peace and security of the citizens," said Gordana Jankulovska, the country's interior minister, at a press conference on Sunday.

Ms Jankulovska declined to reveal identity of the organisation or its political aims. But Nikola Gruevski, Macedonia's prime minister, told media on Sunday that members of the group were highly trained guerrilla fighters with recent combat experience in the Middle East.

The violence also echoes deadly clashes between government forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in 2001.

The violence has deepened a political crisis in the Balkan country - a candidate for EU membership since 2005 - with the government accused of illegal wiretapping, election fraud and selective justice.

Zoran Zaev, leader of the opposition Socialists, has released dozens of recordings of government phone conversations claiming the tapes reveal widespread abuses of power by Mr Gruevski's government. Mr Gruevski has in turn accused Mr Zaev of staging a coup with the support foreign secret services.

Sunday's violence comes days after anti-government demonstrators clashed with police at a protest in Skopje on Tuesday. Political analysts had said the government might provoke violence to undermine the opposition and provide cover for a clampdown on dissidents.

"The government will organise counter-protests. They may even engineer violence and unrest and blame it on the opposition," said Erwan Fouere, former EU special representative to the country, hours before Saturday's operation was launched.

Although the government has provided little information about the armed group, Ms Jankulovska said some of its members came from "a neighbouring country".

The governments of Kosovo and Albania, mostly Muslim countries bordering Macedonia, both issued statements urging restraint and condemning any armed group seeking to undermine Macedonia's stability.

Mr Gruevksi praised the police operation in a televised address to Macedonians on Sunday evening and pledged vigilance against unnamed forces hostile to the state. "All those who wish to make ill to the country, I tell them that they will end up like this terror group."

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