BELGRADE, November 1. /TASS/. Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic has issued orders to shoot down all enemy drones over central Serbia, the Vecernje Novosti newspaper said on Tuesday.

The order was given after unidentified UAVs were detected in the sky near the town of Raska (near the administrative border with Kosovo and Metohija). Serbian MiG-29 jets were scrambled for escorting and destroying the UAVs. The drones promptly left the airspace over central Serbia, the newspaper reports. Otherwise, they would have been shot down, because the commander-in-chief issued orders to instantly use air defense systems.

According to the daily, the drones were illegally monitoring the Serbian army’s bases.

Serbia’s Defense Ministry said that Deputy Prime Minister, Defense Minister Milos Vucevic, accompanied by the Chief of the General Staff, Milan Mojsilovic, inspected military garrisons in the city of Raska on Tuesday.

Vucevic talked to military personnel participating in exercises and expressed his certainty that "the Serbian Army is ready to cope with any task and orders from the supreme commander-in-chief."

Earlier on Tuesday, the Serbian Armed Forces were put on high combat alert due to the situation in Kosovo and Metohija. Vucevic explained that the situation in Kosovo and Metohija was tense, as the Kosovars had begun to enforce the decision to ban Serbian license plates. He stressed that no one wanted to fight, but the army was ready to perform any task.