The troops, which are expected to arrive in mid-April and return home no later than June 20, will join a 500-strong Swedish battalion stationed at Camp Victoria outside the provincial capital Pristina. “Events in Kosovo since March 17, 2004, with demonstrations and ensuing riots, have led the (Swedish) military to identify a need for a temporary reinforcement of the Swedish battalion,” the ministry said in a statement. The Swedish soldiers are part of a 20,000-strong NATO-led international peacekeeping force (KFOR) in Kosovo. Violent riots and clashes between Kosovo’s ethnic Serb and Albanian communities last month left 19 people dead and more than 900 people injured, including 65 international police officers and 58 local police. The outbreak of violence was the worst in the province since the end of the 1998-1999 war which brought it under UN and NATO control.
