Serbia has condemned NATO-led peacekeepers in neighbouring Kosovo for allegedly failing to stop “brutal actions” by Kosovo’s police against ethnic Serbs.
More than a dozen people were injured in violent clashes on Friday.
The violence erupted when ethnic Serbs tried to block recently elected Albanian mayors from entering local government buildings.
Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd and let the new officials into the offices.
Several cars were set on fire during the disorder.
Countries including the UK, US, France and Germany condemned Kosovo, saying using force to install mayors in ethnic Serb areas undermined efforts to improve troubled relations with neighbouring Serbia.
Snap local elections were called last month. They were largely boycotted by ethnic Serbs and only ethnic Albanian or other smaller minority representatives were elected.
In response to the clashes, Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic ordered troops closer to the border with Kosovo and said they would remain at the “highest level of combat readiness”.
In a statement after a meeting of Serbia’s top political and security leadership, Mr Vucic also said NATO-led troops “did not do their job” to protect the Serbs.
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This is not the first time Mr Vucic has warned that Serbia would respond to violence against ethnic Serbs, and he has stepped up combat readiness several times during moments of tension with Kosovo.
However, any attempt by Serbia to send its troops over the border would mean a clash with NATO troops stationed there.
Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, defended the police action.
“It is the right of those elected in democratic elections to assume office without threats or intimidation,” he wrote on Twitter.
“It is also the right of citizens to be served by those elected officials. Participation – not violent obstruction – is the proper way to express political views in a democracy.”
On Saturday, NATO urged Kosovo to dial down tensions with Serbia.
“We urge the institutions in Kosovo to de-escalate immediately & call on all parties to resolve the situation through dialogue,” spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said in a Twitter post.
She said KFOR, the 3,800-strong NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, would remain vigilant.
Almost a decade after the end of a war there, many Serbs in Kosovo’s northern region do not accept Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia and still see Belgrade as their capital.
Ethnic Albanians form more than 90% of the population in Kosovo, with Serbs only the majority in the northern region.
A well-known Iraqi social media influencer has reportedly been shot dead in her car by a gunman on a motorbike.
Om Fahad, whose real name is Ghufran Sawadi, was killed outside her home in Baghdad’s Zayouna district on Friday, according to the AFP news agency, citing security officials.
It appears the unidentified attacker pretended to be delivering food to the victim, one security source said.
Om Fahad, who has nearly half a million TikTok followers, became famous for posting light-hearted videos where she dances to Iraqi music.
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Six days ago, she shared footage of herself driving in a car and also posing in front of a mirror. They have each been watched hundreds of thousands of times.
The influencer was sentenced to six months in prison in February last year for sharing videos that a court ruled contained “indecent speech that undermines modesty and public morality”.
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A campaign was launched in 2023 by the Iraqi government to clamp down on social media content which broke the country’s “morals and traditions”.
The interior ministry set up a committee to look for “offensive” clips on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube, with several influencers being arrested.
“This type of content is no less dangerous than organised crime,” the ministry declared in a promotional video which asked the public to help by reporting such content.
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“It is one of the causes of the destruction of the Iraqi family and society.”
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In 2018, gunmen in Baghdad shot dead Tara Fares, who was a model and influencer.
After years of war and sectarian conflict following the 2003 US invasion that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq has returned to some semblance of normality despite sporadic violence, political instability and corruption.
But civil liberties, particularly among women and sexual minorities, are still constrained in a conservative and male-dominated society.
The family of a missing high school student who may have been the first victim of a suspected serial killer in Mexico City have protested at the site where bones were found last week.
The bones were discovered with the belongings of at least six women, police said, and Amairany Roblero’s relatives have been told that evidence was found relating to her 2012 disappearance.
Ms Roblero was 18 when she vanished and, as is often the case in Mexico, her family was left to investigate her disappearance with little help from prosecutors.
Family friend Alejandra Jimenez said: “The prosecutors had the case file but they didn’t ever give any results to her parents.”
Instead, her parents printed flyers and gave them out near her school – the last place she was seen – but they had “nothing, nowhere to start, nor any directions to the end”, Ms Jimenez added.
A suspect, identified only by his first name, Miguel, was detained by neighbours and police last week after he is alleged to have killed a seventh young woman.
He is accused of waiting for a woman to leave her apartment and then rushing inside to sexually abuse and strangle her 17-year-old daughter.
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The woman returned to the apartment to see the suspect leaving and she was slashed across her neck before he ran off.
She survived but her daughter died.
Investigators searched a room rented by the suspect and found bones, mobile phones and ID cards belonging to several women in the same block, thought to be mementos.
Miguel is awaiting trial on charges of murder and attempted murder relating to the most recent victims.
City prosecutor Ulises Lara insisted the suspect was difficult to catch because “he showed no signs of violent or aggressive behaviour in his daily life”.
Ms Roblero’s family and friends were not accepting this, however.
“They (authorities) have all the means to look for missing people,” Ms Jimenez said. “Instead of focusing on their political campaigns, they should help all the women who are looking for their children.”
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Juan Carlos Gutierrez, a lawyer representing the family of another victim, was also frustrated, asking why no investigation had never been launched in that case, despite missing person reports being filed in 2015.
Ms Jimenez said Ms Roblero’s family had not been told which of the items or remains in the apartment had been linked to her, adding: “This is wearing her parents down physically, mentally.”
Some 2,580 women were murdered in Mexico in 2023, according to the country’s National Public Security System but poorly funded and badly trained prosecutors have failed to stop serial killers over the years.
In 2021 a serial killer in Mexico City killed 19 people but their bodies were only found, buried at his house, after the wife of a police commander became one of the victims.
In 2018 another serial killer in Mexico City murdered at least 10 women and was only stopped after he was seen pushing a dismembered body down the street in a pram.