Crossfire War – Firefight in Macedonia Between Police and Albanian Gunmen

Crossfire War – RAPID FIRE NEWS=TEHRAN – TETOVO – PRISTINA WATCH – Southeast Europe Theatre: Tehran – Ankara – Tirana – Sarajevo – Pristina – Tetovo/(Brussels – Vienna – Warsaw)/Skopje – Kosovska Mitrovica – Belgrade – Banja Luka – Athens – Sofia – Budapest – Tehran – Moscow; Firefight Between Albanian Gunmen – Macedonia Police Near Tetovo – KFOR Units Guard Kosovo Border – Heavy Fighting in Kashmir

Night Watch: BRODEC – Last month a leader of an Albanian nationalist unit in Kosovo threatened his group would begin attacks if there were no signs of international recognition of Kosovo’s independence by November 1. The nationalists may have decided to go into action with the firefight Wednesday in Macedonia near Tetovo in which Macedonian police killed eight Albanian gunmen. B92 reports the engagement took place in the villages of Brodec, Vesala and Vejce in the Sara Mountains along the border with Serbia’s Kosovo province. It is believed the Albanians were led by two wanted criminals Ramadan Siti and Lirim Jakupi aka Nazi. According to security services both men were allowed to escape from Kosovo’s Dubrava prison by “certain structures” in order to destablize the region “should the negotiations go in a direction these structures do not favor.” [B92]

Macedonian police are searching the area for more fighters and hundreds of soldiers serving in NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) are right now guarding the border area between Kosovo and Macedonia. All year there have been news reports of both Albanian and Serbian para-military units forming, heavily armed and ready to go into action on both sides of the issue, no longer believing in any negotiated settlement. Regular readers of crossfirewar.com know Tehran has excellent strategic relations with both Albanians and Serbs knowing when war resumes it will not only occupy the West’s attention away from Iran, but war in this regional theatre can also be used to silence Vienna and the UN agency based there investigating Iran’s nuclear weapons program. I also suspect Southeast Europe is Tehran’s avenue of invasion into Europe and will be conducted with the assistance of every nationality in the region since every government once again hates Vienna and Brussels even more than Tehran does. I have often maintained the division of Yugoslavia divided more than Yugoslavia, but also NATO and well as the European Union (EU) both of them based in Brussels.

Sadporta Mohalla – NewsBlaze reports three Indian soldiers were killed in heavy house to house fighting 15 miles (27 km) north of Srinagar in the village of Sadporta Mohalla in Pattan. During the running gun battle, the soldiers were at times fired upon from different directions. [NEWSBLAZE]

Qandeel Mountains – As Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan returns from Washington with tacit approval for an invasion of northern Iraq, euphemistically called a “cross border operation”, this link from Asharq Al-Awsat provides an excellent portrayal of the Kurdish PKK fighters Turkey’s military will be encountering. All of them are from Kurdish communities in Turkey and some of them joined the PKK fifteen years ago when due to the oppression they experienced as Kurdish university students in Istanbul they felt they had no other choice but to take up weapons. The ones the reporter was allowed to interview stated in Turkey the Kurds are not even permitted to speak in their own language. The article is a moving and convincing testimony. [ASHARQALAWSAT]

Willard Payne is an international affairs analyst who specializes in International Relations. A graduate of Western Illinois University with a concentration in East-West Trade and East-West Industrial Cooperation, he has been providing incisive analysis to NewsBlaze. He is the author of Imagery: The Day Before.