(Releads with NATO securing flashpoint town)

By Matt Robinson

MITROVICA, Kosovo, March 17 (Reuters) - NATO troops were left holding the line against a hostile Serb population in north Kosovo on Monday after riots forced the pullout of United Nations police and civilian staff.

Armoured French infantry vehicles stood at the head of a column of trucks full of French and Spanish troops at one of the two main bridges separating Kosovo Albanians from Kosovo Serbs in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica.

The U.N. mission in the newly-independent country said the withdrawal of its police and officials from the Serb stronghold, whose people bitterly oppose Kosovo's independence from Serbia, was only temporary but could not say when they would return.

Monday's clashes highlighted the risk of Kosovo's partition along ethnic lines and cast further doubt on the deployment in northern Kosovo of a European Union police mission intended to take over much of the role of a nine-year-old U.N. mission.

French, Belgian and Spanish NATO troops in armoured personnel carriers (APCs) secured key points in the flashpoint town. The bridges to the Albanian south were closed. There were no U.N. or Kosovo police on the streets of the Serb north.

"We will maintain our intention to deploy the mission throughout the territory of Kosovo," the EU's new Kosovo envoy, Pieter Feith, told a news conference.

The violence, sparked by a U.N. police operation to retake a U.N. court seized three days earlier by protesting Serbs, was the worst since Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia on Feb 17.

NATO said its troops came under automatic gunfire as Serbs converged on the court following the dawn raid. Serb media reports said about 70 civilians were wounded, along with dozens of U.N. police and soldiers of the 16,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force.

NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, John Craddock, said some Serbs may have been hurt, but he had no details.

"I understand that today (NATO-led) forces had to use both lethal and non-lethal means to control the rioting crowd," he told reporters during a visit to Afghanistan.

Soldiers had followed their rules of engagement, he said, adding: "We want to continue to impress upon the Kosovo Serbian leadership how important it is to maintain control. Violence serves no purpose."

"BATTLE CONTINUES"

The EU last month withdrew a small advance team from north Mitrovica for security reasons. A U.N. spokesman said staff would return "as soon as the security situation permits".

NATO troops secured the entire perimeter of the compound housing the court and main police station.

Backed by big-power ally Russia, Serbia has rejected Kosovo's secession and its recognition by the United States and a majority of the EU's 27 members.

Around 120,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo among 2 million ethnic Albanians. Almost half live in the north, adjacent to Serbia and in complete isolation from the capital Pristina. They reject the incoming EU mission as "occupiers".

Russia on Monday demanded restraint by NATO and Serbia said it was consulting Moscow on joint steps to protect Kosovo Serbs.

Serbia lost control over Kosovo in 1999, when NATO bombed to drive out Serb forces and halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war.

Belgrade is now strengthening a network of parallel structures in Serb areas of Kosovo, severing ties between Serbs and Albanians in all aspects of civic life.

"We have to be present here as a state to provide security for Kosovo Serbs," Serbian Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, told Serbian state television late on Monday.

Addressing the crowd in Mitrovica, Samardzic said: "Our battle continues. Kosovo is part of Serbia." (Editing by Douglas Hamilton and Andrew Roche)

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