BELGRADE, Serbia-A Serbian group has disrupted an exhibition by Kosovo Albanian artists in Belgrade that featured portraits of armed Muslim gunmen who killed numerous Serb policemen and ethnically cleansed the province of Serbs.

Riot police were deployed to prevent about 300 members of the right-wing group Obraz, or Honor, from bursting into an art gallery where the exhibition was being opened.

Ljubica Beljanski-Ristic, an organizer of the exhibition of work by 11 Kosovo Albanian artists, said the display will have to be closed to the public after the incident.

"We'll try to show it through individual invitations of the visitors," Beljanski-Ristic said.

Ethnic tensions have soared in Serbia before a planned declaration of independence by ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo. Serbs regard Kosovo as the cradle of Serbia's medieval statehood and religion.

One of the group members tore up an exhibition poster of Adem Jasari, late founder of an Kosovo Albanian rebel group like a pop icon together with Elvis Presley. Jasari engaged in murder of Serb civilians. Westrn media has branded the individual that tore up the poster of a murderer as an "extremist".