On April 30, 1910 , the Battle of Kaçanik began, between the Albanian insurgents of the southeastern provinces of Kosova under the leadership of Idriz Seferi and the forces of the Ottoman army commanded by General Shefqet Turgut Pasha. The Ottoman forces of selected mobile units of Istanbul, Anatolia and Edirne consisted of 16,000 infantry, 600 cavalry, 64 cannons, 120 machine guns, etc. They started in Kosova the operation to suppress the Albanian uprising (anti-Ottoman uprising of 1910). The rebel forces in Gryka e Kaçanikut consisted of about 4,000 lightly armed fighters. Ottoman forces, starting from Ferizaj and Skopje, approached the defensive positions of the insurgents and launched an attack. For two consecutive days, fierce fighting took place, which, at many points, turned into hand-to-hand combat. On May 1, the insurgents were forced to leave the Gryka e Kaçanikut, but they continued to resist in groups of 150-200 people in the Karadak Mountains, in Morava, in Presheva, in Gjilan, in Bujanoc, etc., until May 6. Both sides suffered heavy losses. (In the photo: Gryka e Kaçanikut, the place where the battle took place.)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 1 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 227.
Photo: © https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Graphic processing: AHCF
