BELGRADE—Scores of protesters smashed their way into the U.S. embassy in Belgrade on Thursday in anger at Kosovo's independence, ransacking rooms and setting fires before riot police dispersed the crowd.
Washington reacted with anger.
"I'm outraged by the mob attack," said its ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, who added he would ask the U.N. Security Council to condemn it unanimously in the latest diplomatic shockwave from Kosovo's secession on Sunday.
The violence—which spilled over to other embassies and included widespread vandalising of shops and banks—marred a mass state-backed rally by up to 200,000 Serbs refusing to accept the loss of their religious heartland Kosovo.
"As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia," Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the crowd from a stage in front of the old Yugoslav parliament building in Belgrade.
"We're not alone in our fight. President Putin is with us," he said, paying tribute to the Russian leader who has opposed U.S. and European states' recognition of Kosovo.
The "people's rally" was Serbia's biggest since protesters filled the streets in 1999 to protest at NATO bombing and then in October 2000, when they stormed the same parliament building to oust nationalist autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.
The atmosphere had been subdued as Serbs of all ages listened to speeches, melancholic patriotic songs and poems about Kosovo, seen as the birthplace of a glorious medieval kingdom but now home to an Albanian majority.
No Police
Police, nowhere to be seen when the U.S. embassy was attacked, moved in half an hour later, firing teargas and beating and detaining rioters to disperse the crowd. Local media said 60 people were injured, a quarter of them police.
The building had been closed and boarded up after rioters stoned it on Sunday when Kosovo declared independence after nine years under U.N. administration.
Police in armoured vans secured the streets and tried to cordon off the whole embassy district, just a few hundred metres (yards) from the official rally. People tried to flee clouds of painful teargas.
Serbian President Boris Tadic urged rioters to stop.
"I appeal to our citizens to protest calmly. All those who take part in the unrest I want to withdraw from the streets and stop attacking foreign embassies," he said in a televised appeal. "This only keeps Kosovo distant from Serbia."
Rioters—many wearing balaclavas and scarves to hide their faces—had attacked the building with sticks and metal bars after destroying two guard boxes outside.
They ripped metal grilles from windows and tore a handrail off the entrance to use as a battering ram and gain entry.
One man climbed up to the first floor, ripped the Stars and Stripes off its pole and briefly put up a Serbian flag.
Other people jumped up and down on the balcony, holding up a Serbian flag as the crowd below of about 1,000 people cheered them on, shouting "Serbia, Serbia".
Black smoke billowed out of the embassy. Papers and chairs were thrown out of the windows, with doors wedged in the window frames and burning.
Some 200 riot police arrived later, driving the crowd away. Some protesters sat on the ground, bleeding. Fire engines arrived to put out the flames, local media reported.
Prayers
Meanwhile, the main rally proceeded as planned with a march to the city's biggest Orthodox cathedral for a prayer service.
State television switched between scenes of the rioting and the serenity of choral singing at the church service.
Small groups of looters, many drunk, broke into street kiosks and shops, taking cigarettes, chocolate and shoes.
News agencies said foreign banks and McDonalds fast-food stores were also attacked and eight city buses damaged.
In the crowds at the main rally were many hardline nationalist Radicals, from Serbia's biggest party, who shouted anti-Albanian slogans.
"Today Kosovo is in all our hearts," their leader Tomislav Nikolic told the rally.
In contrast to the violence by up to 5,000 mainly young rioters, the lack of passion in the main rally crowd appeared to support comments by Western analysts and some ordinary people here that most Serbs were bitter at but resigned to the loss of Kosovo and tired of years of conflict with neighbouring states.
"The politicians are trying to take advantage of the situation. This is not what people wanted. Not these empty words," said one protester, Dejan Pavlovic.
"The loss of Kosovo is a huge humiliation. It's awful what they are doing to us," said Danica, a government employee who did not want to give her surname.
"I don't think this protest might change anything, but I don't see any other way to express my dissatisfaction."
In other protests, several hundred Serb army veterans at a border post between Kosovo and Serbia stoned Kosovo riot police who, backed by Czech troops in riot gear, stood their ground until the protesters dispersed. No one was hurt.
NATO peacekeepers said they were determined to stop a repeat of Tuesday's destruction of two other border posts by Serbs.
In Banja Luka in the Bosnian Serb Republic, several people were injured when protesters holding aloft portraits of Russian President Putin clashed with police at the U.S. consulate.
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