Twelve people are treated in Pristina after a night protest over the Hague court law

Naser Syla, emergency director at a central Pristina hospital, said 12 people were treated and discharged after clashes on Monday night, one of them a police officer and 11 of them civilians. The Associated Press reported the count from Pristina. Protesters had launched flares and firecrackers. Police used tear gas. Many in the crowd carried Albanian flags and Kosovo Liberation Army flags, and placards that read "Vote for the Law!"

The rally followed a failure, as protesters saw it, to move a bill that would narrow the powers of the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers. Parliament voted the amendments through a first reading. It did not advance them to a second vote on Monday. Demonstrators blocked exits of government buildings so lawmakers could not leave until that second step was taken. The second step was not taken.

The court the bill is aimed at

The Specialist Chambers sit in The Hague and try crimes from the 1998-99 war in which the Kosovo Liberation Army fought Serbian forces. Weeks before Monday's protest, the court convicted former president Hashim Thaci and three other former KLA commanders of war crimes from that war. Those verdicts set off weeks of unrest. Monday's crowd was the latest of those weeks, not the first.

Proponents of the amendments say the changes would narrow the court's scope. Opponents, including governments that funded the court, have treated any cut to its jurisdiction as a breach of the deal that created it. The AP report did not quote a final vote tally for the first reading. It did record that the first reading passed, and that the crowd wanted a second vote the same night.

The injuries and the method

Syla's hospital count is the hardest number from the night. Twelve treated, all discharged, one of them police. That is not a count of arrests, and it is not a count of people who left without treatment. It is the emergency-room figure. Tear gas, flares and firecrackers are the methods both sides used, as the AP described them. No death was reported.

The blocking of exits is a separate fact from the street clash. It is an attempt to hold legislators in the building until a procedural step is completed. Parliament did not complete it. The crowd's demand and the chamber's timetable diverged in the same evening.

The two-day clock beside the protest

A separate constitutional clock is running in Pristina. Acting president Albulena Haxhiu has held the office continuously since 4 April. The third paragraph of Article 90 limits that continuity. Wikipedia's current-events desk, citing Kosovo Online, noted on 5 October that the assembly had two days left before a Constitutional Court deadline on the presidential election, and that the chamber was also due to meet on Specialist Chambers amendments. The protest and the presidency deadline are not the same dispute. They land in the same week, in the same building.

The open question on Tuesday morning is whether the second reading is scheduled, and whether another night produces another hospital count. Monday ended with a first reading passed, a second reading not held, 12 people discharged, and the Hague convictions still in force.