PRISTINA, Serbia, April 12 (Reuters) - The head of Kosovo's telecommunications authority was the target of a mortar attack on Thursday and a Kosovo policeman escorting him was injured, a police source said.

"The car was hit by a mortar bomb. A Kosovo police officer is injured. It happened in the village of Loznica 35 km (22 miles) west of Pristina," the source told Reuters.

Telecommunications chief Anton Berisha has been under close protection since Feb 28 when gunmen opened fire on his car on the main road from Pristina to the western town of Pec.

Berisha was recently involved in awarding a second mobile phone licence for Kosovo, the breakaway southern province whose ethnic Albanian majority hopes to win independence from Serbia later this year.

The source was unable to say whether he escaped completely unhurt from Thursday's attack.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombs drove out Serb forces accused of atrocities in a two-year war with guerrillas.

Organised crime in the area is rife and dozens of unsolved killings since 1999 have been attributed to underworld feuds.

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