Hungary sends military medical team to Kosovo to treat injured Hungarian KFOR peacekeepers

The Hungarian Defence Forces' A319 Airbus, designed for providing medical care, left Kecskemét for Kosovo on Monday evening, honvedelem.hu reports

The soldiers of the Hungarian Defence Forces participating in the NATO peacekeeping force had earlier been deployed for crowd control operations in the Kosovo settlement of Zvečan. According to the Ministry of Defence, more than twenty Hungarian soldiers were injured in the clash, seven of them seriously, but their condition is stable.

The injured Hungarian soldiers are being airlifted to Hungary for further treatment.

Major General Ferenc Kajári, Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff, also accompanied the medical team on board.

Clashes between police and local Serbs broke out in three municipalities in northern Kosovo on Monday morning, and the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force KFOR was deployed to the affected municipalities to prevent the situation from escalating.

After midnight, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó posted on his Facebook page about the Hungarian ambassador in Prishtina having visited the four Hungarian soldiers who were in need of treatment for shrapnel injuries. One of them had to undergo surgery, but none of their injuries were life-threatening. In the video below, one of the Hungarian soldiers can be heard shouting “I'm injured!" in Hungarian.

Following the clashes that resulted in the injury of 20 Hungarian soldiers, Szijjártó had earlier issued a statement on his Facebook page. The Hungarian Foreign Minister said that "Hungary is interested in peace and calm in our neighbourhood, in the Western Balkans".

Szijjártó was rather terse in his post about the unrest itself. "Hungarian soldiers serving in KFOR Kosovo under Italian command were deployed today in the settlement of Zvečan. The Hungarian soldiers carried out their tasks in accordance with the orders they had received, during which several of them were wounded", the Foreign Minister said.

He failed to mention that the injuries of the Hungarian peacekeepers were caused by Serbian demonstrators. The Hungarian Foreign Minister was in Belgrade on Friday, where he spoke out in support of the beleaguered Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who the president of Kosovo blames for the unrest. Vučić, however, said that it was not he, but the prime minister of Kosovo who provoked the conflict between the Serbs and KFOR.