Three UN police die in shootout at Kosovo jail

A shootout at a prison in northern Kosovo killed three international police officers, including two American women, and wounded 11 others, a UN spokesman said.

Witnesses and international sources in the divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica said that the UN police officers had engaged in a shootout that lasted about 10 minutes. One source suggested that the shooting began in an argument over US forces occupying Iraq. Four Jordanian police officers were arrested in connection with the incident, a Nato source told AP on condition of anonymity.

"It is too early to draw any conclusions with regard to what happened there," the head of the UN police, Stefan Feller, told Associated Press Television News minutes after visiting the prison shooting site. Among those killed is a member of the prison's management staff and a member of a Jordanian special police unit.

The body of a police officer, covered with a jacket, lay for hours in the yard of the prison compound where the shooting occurred. Police officers sealed off the area.

UN spokesman Neeraj Singh said: "Police are currently investigating the circumstances of the incident."

Milan Ivanovic, a doctor in the hospital in the Serb-held part of Kosovska Mitrovica, told AP that five American officers and one Austrian officer were being treated at his hospital. It was not clear where the other officers were being treated.