Lipkovo crisis | |||||||
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Part of the 2001 insurgency in Macedonia | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
National Liberation Army | Macedonia | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Abedin Zimberi[1] Nazmi Sulejmani Lefter Koxhaj Xhezair Shaqiri |
Boris Trajkovski Ljubčo Georgievski Pande Petrovski Ljube Boškoski | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
113th Brigade "Ismet Jashari" Skanderbeg special unit |
Macedonian Army Macedonian Police "Tigar" Special Police Unit | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
12 killed[2] |
13 soldiers killed[2] 7 policemen killed[2] 2 Border Policemen captured (later realised unharmed)[3] | ||||||
3 ethnic Albanian civilians killed 10,000 Albanian civilians displaced[4] |
The Lipkovo crisis (Macedonian: Липковска криза, Albanian: Kriza e Likovës) was a crisis involving Macedonian security forces and Albanian insurgents from the National Liberation Army (NLA).[5][6][7] During the crisis, the NLA captured the Lipkovo dam, which caused a 12-day-long water crisis for the neighboring town of Kumanova.[5][8] On 18 June 2001, the NLA agreed to let the International Red Cross and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) restart the water supply systems.[9] Macedonian military operations were halted to allow inspectors to access and repair the pumps.[7]