Close to 8,000 migrants, mostly from poverty stricken Kosovo, have been detained in the past six days after crossing into Hungary illegally, police said Tuesday amid a rising influx of asylum seekers.

Since the beginning of February, over 1,000 illegal immigrants have been arrested every day.

At least 37 people, including 22 police officers, were injured Tuesday, when Kosovo police clashed with thousands of violent protesters demanding the dismissal of a Serb minister accused of insulting the ethnic-Albanian majority.

Police fired tear gas and deployed a water cannon in scuffles with protesters after a few thousand supporters of the nationalist Self-Determination opposition party tried to break into the government building in the center of the capital Pristina, an AFP correspondent reported.

Police in Kosovo fired tear gas to disperse groups of stone-throwing protesters Saturday as thousands took to the streets of Pristina to demand the dismissal of a Serb minister accused of insulting the ethnic Albanian majority.

The clashes erupted at the end of a rally in the capital at which some 7,000 people, according to police, called on the government to fire Labor and Social Welfare Minister Aleksandar Jablanovic, one of three Serb ministers in Prime Minister Isa Mustafa's cabinet.

Visiting NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Friday warned authorities in mainly Muslim Kosovo of the danger posed by foreign fighters returning from Syria and Iraq.

“The returning of foreign fighters is imposing a threat to all of us, of course to the countries in the region and to all European countries,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic is to make a landmark visit Wednesday to Kosovo, the former Serbian province that unilaterally declared independence in 2008 to the fury of Belgrade. 

Vucic's highly symbolic visit for Orthodox New Year will include stops in Serbian enclaves but no meetings with Kosovo's leaders, Belgrade announced. 

Kosovo authorities said Friday a potential car bombing was thwarted in Pristina on Christmas day when police stopped a Serbian in a vehicle packed with a large quantity of explosives.

Kosovo's two main political parties Monday signed a deal naming Isa Mustafa as prime minister, a move that could help end a nearly six-month-long political crisis.

The deal between Mustafa's Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and outgoing prime minister Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) was inked in parliament in front of journalists but no details were revealed.

An historic fence-building visit to Belgrade by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama took a disastrous turn Monday when the leaders of the two countries clashed publicly over Kosovo.

All was going well as Rama and Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic spoke to reporters about turning the page on stormy relations between the two Balkan neighbors until the Albanian mentioned Kosovo, calling on Serbia to recognize the "irreversible reality" of its independence.

Kosovo's foreign minister made a landmark visit to Serbia on Thursday, the first since the former Serbian province unilaterally declared independence in 2008 to the fury of Belgrade.

The presence of Enver Hoxhaj and his Albanian counterpart Ditmir Bushati in the Serbian capital was seen as a sign that a recent flare-up of tensions between Serbs and ethnic Albanians is calming.

Kosovo police said on Monday they had arrested 40 ethnic Albanians suspected of fighting alongside Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria in the largest-ever operation against suspected radicals in the breakaway Balkan state.

The operation by special police forces was carried out early on Monday at some 60 locations throughout Kosovo, including make-shift mosques suspected of serving as recruiting sites.