AFP/Reuters/Kumanovo, Macedonia

Macedonia has accused gunmen “from a neighbouring state” of planning a “terrorist attack” and injuring four police officers, three of them seriously, in clashes early yesterday.
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 have 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 police officers who sustained serious injuries were taken to hospital in the capital Skopje, some 40km to the south, Dragan Tasevski, a hospital doctor in Kumanovo, told reporters.
The fourth was treated locally.
Helicopters circled the ethnically-mixed region of some 100,000 people and an interior ministry spokesman said he had information on “casualties” but refused to say how many.
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 yesterday afternoon as police said the operation was still ongoing.
The incident comes less than 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 2.1mn 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%.
The events are likely to deepen concern in the West over stability in Macedonia, where the government is on the ropes over allegations by the main opposition, the Social Democrats, of illegal wire-tapping and widespread abuse of office.
The opposition has begun small but daily protests demanding the resignation of conservative Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, and is threatening to rally thousands on May 17.
Observers fear political leaders on either side may try to stoke ethnic tensions as leverage.
Opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who has been releasing damaging wire tapes he says were recorded by the government and leaked to him by a whistleblower, appeared to suggest the drama had been concocted.
“I call on Nikola Gruevski to immediately come before the citizens and explain who wants to destabilise Macedonia, why and with what purpose,” he said in a statement. “This dark scenario will not work. The citizens see who has an interest in such a scenario.”
Many in Macedonia, regardless of ethnicity, are frustrated at the glacial pace of development and integration with the West, with the country’s bid to join the European Union and Nato blocked by a long-running dispute with Greece over the country’s name.