Nato is sending hundreds of extra troops to Kosovo amid rising tension in the north along its border with Serbia.

科索沃北部与塞尔维亚交界地区形势日益紧张，北约因此向科索沃额外派遣了百余人的部队。

The military alliance said the situation had not deteriorated¹（恶化） but that reinforcements were needed to relieve troops currently patrolling the north.

Soldiers from Nato's Kosovo Force were deployed² after clashes broke out between Kosovo police and ethnic³ Serbs.

The trouble began when the Kosovan government sent ethnic Albanian police to enforce a ban on Serbian imports.

A border post was torched and demolished⁴ and a Kosovo policeman killed after Serbian nationalists reacted angrily to their presence.

Previously⁵, the border posts had been guarded by ethnic Serb police, whom the government in Pristina suspected of turning a blind eye to the ban on imports from Serbia.

The ban was imposed in response to Belgrade's effective bar on imports from Kosovo, imposed when it unilaterally（单方面地） declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Serbia refuses to admit any goods with a "Republic of Kosovo" customs stamp.

Kosovo's 60,000 ethnic Serbs reject Kosovo's independence from Serbia.

Serbia itself has also refused to recognise its former territory's independence.

More than 70 countries have recognised Kosovo's independence, but an even greater number of countries have withheld⁶ recognition.

Troops from Kosovo Force (Kfor) stepped in to guard the border after last week's unrest.

The Reuters news agency said 600 German and 100 Austrian troops from Kfor's reserve battalion⁷ would be deployed to relieve those already in the area. Kfor has about 6,000 soldiers in Kosovo.