US monitoring large Serbian force along Kosovo border, White House says

The United States is monitoring a troubling Serbian military deployment along the border of Kosovo that is destabilizing the area, the White House said on Friday and called for the forces to be withdrawn.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that Kosovo's peacekeeping force is going to be increasing its presence of NATO forces in northern Kosovo as a result of the tensions.

Kosovo authorities said police fought around 30 heavily armed Serbs who stormed the Kosovo village of Banjska on Sunday and barricaded themselves in a Serbian Orthodox monastery. Three attackers and one police officer were killed.

The gunbattle has prompted new international concern over stability in Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority and declared independence from Serbia in 2008 after a guerrilla uprising and a 1999 NATO intervention.