The Battle of Tetovo (Macedonian: Битка за Тетово, romanized: Bitka za Tetovo, Albanian: Beteja e Tetovës), was the largest engagement during the 2001 insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia, in which Macedonian security forces battled the National Liberation Army (NLA) for control of the city.

[16] With the formation of an insurgency, the National Liberation Front (NLA) began seizing territory in and around the Tetovo area.

[17] Fifteen Macedonian police and a NATO German soldier were also wounded when joint barracks in the outskirts of the town where hit by mortar fire.

The next day, the German Ministry of Defence moved in two Leopard 2 tanks from Prizren, in Kosovo, in order to protect the base.

[20] By 20 March, another 400 KFOR German combat troops equipped with Marder armored vehicles[20] and more Leopard II tanks had been deployed to Tetovo.

Western and Albanian media reported that Macedonian forces mistook a cellphone for an explosive device, though it was later established that it was, indeed, a hand grenade.

Images of the dead men became famous, marking the insurgency's first martyrs and bringing Macedonia's violence to the world spotlight.

A Macedonian Mi-17 helicopter crashed while ferrying police forces to a ski resort on the outskirts of town, killing the pilot and wounding 16 policemen.

[23] The offensive ended two days later with the Macedonian security forces taking control of the city, the fortified medieval fortress and the surrounding villages.

As United States and European envoys met with President Boris Trajkovski in Skopje on 23 July, the battle reached Tetovo's suburbs.

On 23 July, the Macedonians used ex-Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopters for the first time in the conflict, responding to Albanian mortar fire that wounded 20 civilians in the Koltuk area.

On 24 July the Macedonian government issued an ultimatum demanding the NLA retreat from their positions in Tetovo and the villages which they took during the ceasefire or face an all out attack.

The NLA would continue to abuse ceasefires to gain ground in the north of Tetovo as Harald Schenker in a report for OSCE would state: "The OSCE was in danger of becoming the object of the tensions within the crisis government, particularly as it had no mandate, let alone the power to prevent or even stop the territorial gains that the UCK/ NLA had made in the area north of Tetovo in clear violation of the ceasefire.

The next day, the rebels attacked Macedonian army barracks in central Tetovo, sending black plumes of smoke above the northern and southwestern suburbs.

Over the next few months, NATO and Macedonian troops worked to disarm the NLA, which ceded power after the thirty-day Operation Essential Harvest.