A Serbian police officer was killed and another wounded in a shootout on July 17 during a routine vehicle check near the Bosnian border, the Serbian government said, blaming neighbouring Kosovo for what it described as an act of "terrorism". 

The two Balkan neighbours, which have a history of fractious relations and occasional violent flare-ups, remain at odds. Serbia refuses to recognise the independence of its former province, while Kosovo refuses to make concessions to its Serb minority. Serbian authorities have pointed fingers at Kosovo, stating that the policeman was killed by an Albanian “in a terrorist act”. 

According to a statement from Serbia’s Interior Minister Ivica Dacic, police at the border stopped a Serbian-licensed car carrying two individuals. One of them exited the vehicle and shot one officer in the chest and another in the shoulder before fleeing. The wounded officer is in stable condition in hospital.

"He killed a policeman, he carried out this obvious act of terrorism that originates from Kosovo [and] from Albanian structures. This cannot be a coincidence," Dacic told reporters. Investigators found at the scene a Kosovo passport with the name Artan Hajrizi and a German identification card.

Kosovo's population is predominantly of Albanian ethnicity. On July 18, Dacic announced that Bosnian authorities in the town of Bijeljina had arrested a man identified as Z.R. on suspicion of organising Hajrizi's trip from the southern Serbian town of Presevo to Loznica.

In a brief interview carried by Pristina's Insajderi news portal, a man identifying himself as Artan Hajrizi, speaking from Germany, claimed his brother Faton Hajrizi had stolen his documents. Kosovo media reports indicated that Faton Hajrizi had escaped from a jail in Kosovo earlier this month.

Momir Stojanovic, former director of the Military Security Agency, told the Serbian daily newspaper Danas that the statements from Dacic, describing the murder of the police officer as Albanian terrorism, was an attempt to divert attention from sensitive issues such as lithium mining.

Kosovo’s authorities have called for the incident not to be politicised. Prime Minister Albin Kurti, at a press conference on July 18, said that the issue “should not be politicised” and called on relevant institutions to “do their job professionally”. 

Meanwhile, Kosovo's foreign ministry has advised its nationals to exercise caution in Serbia and to avoid the area of the shootout. Serbian police have deployed drones and a helicopter in their ongoing search for the suspect. The other person in the car, potentially the driver, was arrested at the scene.