Petrit Selimi

Pristina Basic Court on Monday ordered 30 days of detention for A.L., suspected for setting fire to the house of Alban Selimi, a staffer on Kosovo's public broadcaster, Radio Television of Kosovo, RTK, on Thursday.

The garage which is part of the house located in Fushe Kosove/Kosovo Polje, near Pristina, was heavily damaged by the fire. No casualties were reported.

Hundreds of family members of Kosovo Albanian civilians killed by Serbian forces on January 15, 1999 gathered on Friday in Recak/Racak, a village 20 kilometres south of Pristina, to commemorate the anniversary.

Forty-four people are confirmed to have been killed that day, and one woman remains missing.

The Hague-based Specialist Prosecutor’s Office has interviewed former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Sylejman Selimi - who was recently freed from jail after a war crimes sentence - as a suspect, his lawyers said.

“Canada will stay alongside Kosovo forever," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said.

Beta reported this on Wednesday, citing a statement published by the office of the Kosovo president, Hashim Thaci.

"111 countries have recognized our independence, despite the continued, and regrettable, hostility of Serbia and Russia towards us," says Petrit Selimi.

This has been stated in a opinion piece penned by Kosovo's acting foreign minister, published by the Financial Times, and carried by the Belgrade-based daily Danas.

The executive board voted on Wednesday by 27 to 14 for Kosovo's bid to join UNESCO to move to the next stage, despite opposition from Serbia, which sees it as a further unacceptable step towards recognition of its former province's independence.

"It was a small but emotional step forward in a long road," Kosovo's Deputy Foreign Minister Petrit Selimi wrote on Twitter after the vote.

Opposition party MPs set off three tear gas canisters in the legislature on Thursday, causing the chamber to be evacuated and the parliamentary session to be halted.

The canisters were brought into parliament despite that fact that MPs were searched on Thursday morning under new security measures introduced after a similar tear-gas attack by opposition lawmakers last week.

Serbia's Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying that Kosovo's request to become a member of UNESCO is unacceptable under international law, Serbian public broadcaster RTS reported on Sunday.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci announced on Thursday that Kosovo had applied to join the UN's culture arm, UNESCO, marking another step to achieve full recognition of its independence.

Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic warned on Thursday that Thaci could be arrested if he attends the conference about Balkan countries' European integration in Belgrade on April 24.