| Surkis ambush | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Insurgency in Kosovo | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Kosovo Liberation Army |  Yugoslav police | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Unknown | Miloš Nikolić † | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Unknown | 2 Police officers | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| None | 2 killed | ||||||
The Surkis ambush was an incident that occurred on 25 October 1996 in village of Surkis. The perpetrators of the ambush, the Kosovo Liberation Army killed 2 Yugoslav police officers in the ambush.
After the case of Kosovo was not addressed in the Dayton Agreement, despite the presence of Kosovar president Ibrahim Rugova, the Kosovo Liberation Army, which had previously organized many guerrilla attacks during 1991-early 1995, escalated their attacks starting an insurgency in Kosovo. [1]
During 1995, a police officer was murdered allegedly by the KLA, and these murders and ambushed continued for the rest of the year, however the KLA only claimed responsibility for the attacks a year after in 1996. [2] [3]
In 1996, KLA attacks further intensified and included the Podujevo region. On 16 June, the KLA wounded police officer Goran Mitrović after attacking a police patrol in Podujevo. Again in Podujevo, the KLA seriously wounded Serbian police officer Sredoje Radojević on 11 July. More attacks occurred in Podujevo such as on 2 August, when the police station was attacked by insurgents and on 31 August in the Pristina-Podujevo-Kursumlija road; however, this attack did not lead to any casualties. [4]
On 25 October 1996, Kosovo Liberation Army insurgents armed with automatic weapons ambushed 2 Yugoslav police officers in the village of Surkis, near Podujevo. The ambush resulted in the instant death of 2 officers, Miloš Nikolić (34), a police inspector of the Pristina Precinct and Dragan Rakić from Velika Reka, a reserve police officer and a manager of a company in Podujevo. Nikolić was killed in front of his house. [4] [5] [6]
Another attack happened in the village of Rznic, Dečan after the KLA attacked a police station. [4]
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