The ethnically divided city has been on edge since Kosovan authorities sought to install Kosovar-Albanian mayors in a number of Serb-majority municipalities last month, triggering rioting that injured 30 Nato peacekeepers.
Today’s clashes erupted after Kosovan police arrested a suspected leader of a Serb paramilitary group.
The police were later driven back by a crowd of ethnic Serbs throwing stones, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.
Air-raid sirens wailed in the city as around 100 Serbs gathered in a tense standoff with police.
Kosovo’s interior minister Xhelal Svecla said three police officers were “slightly” injured in the melee.
Svecla confirmed that police had also arrested an individual suspected of organising the attack on Nato troops last month.
“The Kosovan police today arrested … one of the leaders of the criminal group ‘Civil Defence’ and the leader of the criminal gangs that over the years have terrorised our citizens,” Svecla said in a statement posted on social media.
The clashes in the north came as Prime Minister Kurti introduced a five-point plan to ease tensions that included fresh elections in contested municipalities in the north, along with a return to European Union-backed talks with Serbia.
Tensions have been boiling over for weeks in Kosovo’s restive north following Pristina’s decision to install ethnic Albanian mayors in four Serb-majority municipalities.
The mayors were elected in polls held in April that were boycotted by ethnic Serb voters.
The episode was the latest in a long list of incidents to rock the area since Kosovo declared unilateral independence from Serbia in 2008 – nearly a decade after Nato forces helped push Serbian forces out of the province during a bloody war that killed around 13,000 people, most of whom were ethnic Albanians.
Belgrade along with its key allies China and Russia has refused to recognise the declaration, effectively preventing Kosovo from having a seat at the United Nations.
Kosovo is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Albanians.
But in the northern stretches of the territory near the border with Serbia, ethnic Serbs remain the majority in several municipalities.
Serbia has long seen Kosovo as its spiritual and historical homeland that witnessed pivotal battles over the centuries and continues to host some of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s most revered monasteries.