At least eight people were killed and 13 wounded when attackers in moving vehicles opened fire on people in a town in southern Belgrade.
At least eight people were killed and 13 wounded after gunmen in moving cars opened fire on passersby and fled in a town south of the Serbian capital.
State television said the incident occurred late Thursday near the town of Mladenovac, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Belgrade.
RTS reported that the 21-year-old attacker used an automatic weapon to shoot people at random, and police said they were still looking for the suspect who fled after the attack.
Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic called the shooting an “act of terrorism,” the report said.
Special police and helicopter units were dispatched to the area, as well as ambulances.
The Mladenovac attack was shooting spree A 13-year-old boy used his father’s gun to kill eight classmates and a security guard at a central school in Belgrade. One of the children who died was a French citizen, according to the French Foreign Ministry.
Early Thursday, many students dressed in black and held flowers to pay their respects to the victims. , still blocked by the police. They stood in front of a pile of flowers, a small teddy bear, and a soccer ball.
The Balkans is one of Europe’s top regions for guns per capita, and Serbia is littered with the remnants of the 1990s war.
Still, the country has strict gun control, the last being a mass shooting in 2013 in which 13 people were killed by a veteran in a central Serbian village.
Authorities moved to further tighten gun control on Thursday, with police urging citizens to lock their guns and keep them away from children.
Police said the shooter, identified as Kosta Kecmanović, planned the attack for a month, drawing sketches of classrooms at Vladislav Rybnicar Primary School and compiling a list of children he planned to kill.
The shooting at Vladislav Ribnikar Primary School left seven people hospitalized, six children and one teacher. A girl shot in her head has a life-threatening condition and a boy is in critical condition with a spinal cord injury, doctors said Thursday.
Kecmanovic has not disclosed his motives for his actions.
A three-day period of mourning for the school shooting will begin Friday morning.
Experts have repeatedly warned of the dangers weapons numbers pose in a deeply divided country like Serbia, where convicted war criminals are celebrated and violence against minority groups often goes unpunished. I was.
They also add that there are risks from decades of instability stemming from conflicts in the 1990s and ongoing economic hardships.
“We have been subjected to violence for too long,” psychologist Zarco Trebiesanin told N1 TV. “Children copy models. need to do it.”