Bus from LESKOVAC to KOSOVSKA MITROVICA

Leskovac is a city settlement and administrative center of the Jablanica Administrative District.

The settlement dates back to the Roman Empire. The medieval name of the settlement is Glubočica.

The legend says that under the hill near the present city there was a lake, and when its drying was occurred there was a plant of hazel (hazelnut), after which the city was named more than 700 years ago. The present name of the city as the name of the settlement was first mentioned in 1308 in the Charter of King Milutin.

During the NATO bombing of the FRY in 1999, Leskovac and its surroundings were bombarded almost daily. During a raid on April 12, 1999, a railroad bridge in Grdelicka Gorge hit the passenger train, which was crossing the bridge at that time. In this attack, several dozen civilians were killed.

In Leskovac there is the National Library Radoje Domanovic, which was created from the City Reading Room, founded in 1869. The library was designated in 1961 for the home library of the Jablanica District. The library now has over 80,000 books and other publications distributed in different sectors, among which are the loan and children's department, the foreign book, as well as the local department that was established in 2012 as a legacy and is named after Nikolai Timchenko and has over 15,000 titles.

On May 2, 1948, the National Museum was founded in Leskovac, comprised of three departments - ethnographic-archaeological, national liberation struggle with the workers' movement and the Textile Industry Museum. The museum then moved to a new building on May 10, 1974, which opened the possibility for the development of museum activities, and today it has more departments for archeology, history, art history, ethnology, conservation and souvenir making.

Mitrovica or Kosovska Mitrovica is a city and municipality in the northern part of Kosovo. Settled on the banks of Ibar and Sitnica rivers, the city is the administrative center of the District of Mitrovica.

In 2013, following the North Kosovo crisis, the Serb-majority municipality of North Mitrovica was created, dividing the city in two administrative units, both operating within the Kosovo legal framework.

According to the 2011 Census, in Mitrovica live 84,235 inhabitants, 71,909 of which in the southern municipality and 12,326 in North Mitrovica.

In the middles ages the city was called "Demetrius" in honour of Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki. When the city came under Ottoman rule, it was renamed "Mitrovica", as happened to other locations in the Balkans named after Saint Demetrius.

After President Tito's death, each of the constituent parts of Yugoslavia had to have one place named with the word 'Tito' (or 'Tito's') included, the city was then known as Titova Mitrovica in Serbian or Mitrovica e Titos in Albanian, until 1991.

The city is now known as Mitrovica and Mitrovicë in the Albanian language and Kosovska Mitrovica in the Serbian language.

The city is one of the oldest known settlements in Kosovo, being first mentioned in written documents during the Middle Ages.[citation needed] The name Kosovska Mitrovica comes from the 14th century, from Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki,[citation needed] but there are some other legends on the origin of its name.[citation needed] Near Mitrovica is the medieval fortress of Zvečan, which played an important role during the Kingdom of Serbia under Nemanjić rule.

Under Ottoman rule Mitrovica was a typical small Oriental city. Rapid development came in the 19th century after lead ore was discovered and mined in the region, providing what has historically been one of Kosovo largest industries.

It became an industrial town, formerly the economic centre of Kosovo because of the nearby Trepča Mines. It grew in size as a centre of trade and industry with the completion of the railway line to Skopje in 1873–1878, which linked Mitrovica to the port of Thessalonika.[5] Another line later linked the town to Belgrade and Western Europe. During World War II, the city was part of Axis-occupied Serbia. In 1948, Mitrovica had a population of 13,901 and in the early 1990s of about 75,000.

Both the town and municipality were badly affected by the 1999 Kosovo War. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the area had been the scene of guerrilla activity by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) prior to the war. It came under the command of NATO's French sector; 7,000 French troops were stationed in the western sector with their headquarters in Mitrovica. They were reinforced with a contingent of 1,200 troops from the United Arab Emirates, and a small number of Danish troops.

 In the aftermath of the war, the town became a symbol of Kosovo's ethnic divisions. The badly damaged southern half of the town was repopulated by an estimated 50,000 Albanians. Their numbers have since grown with the arrival of refugees from destroyed villages in the countryside.[citation needed] Most of the approximately 6,000 Roma fled to Serbia, or were relocated to one of two resettlement camps, Cesmin Lug, or Osterode, in North Kosovska Mitrovica. In the north, live some 17,000 Kosovo Serbs, with 2,000 Kosovo Albanians and 1,700 Bosniaks inhabiting discrete enclaves on the north bank of the Ibar River. Almost all of the Serbs living on the south bank were displaced to North Mitrovica after the Kosovo War. In 2011, the city had an estimated total population of 71,601.