Serbia's president is visiting Serb-dominated areas of neighboring Kosovo days after a moderate Kosovo Serb politician was gunned down in an attack that fueled concerns of instability in the Balkans.

Waving Serbian flags, hundreds of people welcomed President Aleksandar Vucic as he arrived Saturday in northern Kosovo. Officials say the two-day visit is designed to ease tensions among Kosovo Serbs following the killing Tuesday of one of their leading politicians, Oliver Ivanovic.

Unknown assailants shot and killed Ivanovic outside his party's office in the ethnically-divided town of Mitrovica. Upon arriving in the town, Vucic laid a wreath at the site of the attack.

Ivanovic was a rare voice of tolerance amid persistent ethnic tensions in Kosovo, a mostly ethnic-Albanian former Serbian province whose 2008 declaration of independence Serbia rejects.