UN police in Kosovo fired teargas and rubber bullets during clashes yesterday with ethnic Albanians protesting against a UN plan they say falls short of full independence from Serbia.
Hospital officials said they had treated 70 people, including four who were seriously wounded.
Fourteen people were arrested as Kosovo and UN riot police advanced on hundreds of demonstrators who were hurling stones and bottles.
The clashes, a repeat of riots in November, underscored Western fears of what the United States described last week as a possible "breakdown in order" if a decision on the Albanian majority's demand for independence does not come soon.
A UN plan unveiled this month would, if adopted by the UN Security Council, set the territory on the path to statehood, eight years after NATO bombs drove out Serb forces and the United Nations took control.
But some among Kosovo's 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority are angry at the plan's provisions for a powerful European overseer and self-government for the 100,000 remaining Serbs.
The protesters called for an independence referendum and rejected talks with Serbia, which in 1998-99 killed 10,000 Albanians and expelled 800,000 in a two-year war with rebels