Macedonian police special forces clashed overnight with protesters who tried to block the streets around parliament following a brawl between rival ethnic Albanian deputies.
At least five people were arrested, police said today, and at least three were treated in hospital for minor injuries sustained when they resisted arrest.
The incident began during a debate over electoral reform. Ethnic Albanian deputies of the opposition Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) and the Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP) of the ruling coalition first argued, then traded punches.
Last night, DUI activists in 10 cars tried to block the intersection in front of the parliament building in downtown Skopje. Special police forces in civilian clothing and armed with automatic weapons intervened, witnesses said.
"Some of the activists were harassing people, and others went towards the parliament," said a police spokesman. "Police intervened and stopped them. Some of them attacked the police and others fled."
The spokesman said some of the activists were armed.
The DUI was the main political faction to emerge from a guerrilla army that fought government forces for seven months in 2001 before a Western-brokered peace accord offered the ethnic Albanian minority greater rights.
Albanians make up around 25 per cent of Macedonia's two million people, living mainly in the north and west of the country. The DUI laid down its weapons in late 2001 and entered government in 2002.
But it found itself in opposition last year following a general election that brought the conservative VMRO-DPMNE of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski into power in coalition with the DUI's bitter rivals, the Democratic Party of Albanians, and PDP.
All ethnic Albanian parties accuse each other consistently of corruption, self-interest and neglecting the needs of the Albanian population.