BELGRADE (AFP) — Rioters opposed to Kosovo's independence stormed the US embassy in Belgrade before setting it on fire on Thursday, after a massive peaceful rally in the Serbian capital.

With no police in sight, several hundred young men dressed in hooded sports tops and scarfs threw flares and broke into the premises on the main boulevard of Kneza Milosa. The embassy was unstaffed at the time.

The ground floor and a side building were burning, with smoke billowing out as anti-riot police backed up by armoured vehicles fought the young men with tear gas.

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"There are a number of Serbian citizens ... on a part of the embassy compound, in the consular area," US State Department spokesman spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington.

He urged Serbian authorities to take control of the situation.

Serbian President Boris Tadic, on an official visit to Romania, appealed for an immediate stop to the violence, private news agency Beta reported.

"To all those who are participating in the unrest, I want to ask them to pull back. It only harms the defence of our integrity and sovereignty and the defence of our Kosovo," it quoted Tadic as saying.

Down the road from the US embassy, a guard house was also set alight in front of the German embassy, while a car was alight outside of the Canadian diplomatic mission.

Several thousand people were in the area during the attack, which came after rioters looted shops in several downtown areas and damaged to the Bosnian, Croatian and Turkish embassies.

Police arrived on the scene around half an hour later, and the US embassy fire was brought under control about an hour after it began.

The attack came after more than 150,000 people staged a peaceful protest in front of the old Yugoslav parliament nearby, in a government-organised rally against the independence of Kosovo.

State television switched between images of police fighting the rioters and a simultaneous church service attended by nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and leaders of the Serbian Orthodox Church at the nearby Temple of St Sava.

Following the violence, more than 30 people were admitted to an hospital emergency centre, half of them police and two journalists from France and the Netherlands, Beta said, quoting hospital spokesman Dusan Jovanovic

The unrest was the latest in a series of violent incidents following Sunday's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian-dominated parliament -- a move vehemently opposed by Belgrade.

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