New tragedy in Serbia, the day after the murder of eight children in a school in Belgrade. On Thursday evening, May 4, a man killed 8 people and injured 13 others in a shootout near the Serbian town of Mladenovac, about 60 km south of Belgrade, according to local media. The shooter opened fire with an automatic weapon on a group of people from a moving vehicle before fleeing, according to public television RTS. He was arrested by the police during the morning, after long hours of research, according to the same source.
“After a [extensive] manhunt, members of the Interior Ministry arrested U.B., born in 2002, in the Kragujevac region,” in central Serbia, the ministry said in a statement. .
Numerous police and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, and helicopters were flying overhead. On Thursday evening in three different villages near Mladenovac, about 60 km south of Belgrade, a 21-year-old man opened fire with an automatic weapon from a moving vehicle before fleeing, according to public television RTS. According to the same source, at the height of the operations, approximately 600 law enforcement officers had been deployed, including members of a special anti-terrorist unit. The police blocked the access road to several villages.
Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic called the incident a “terrorist act”. Worried relatives gathered outside the Belgrade emergency medical center, where at least eight of the injured were taken to hospital, the N1 television channel reported. Health Minister Danica Grujicic briefly visited the center.
This shooting came the day after a 13-year-old student shot and killed eight children and a caretaker at a school in Belgrade, a killing that deeply shocked the country. Seven people – six students and a teacher – were also injured in this attack. Two were still in critical condition Thursday after undergoing a series of surgeries.
Three days of national mourning were declared from Friday. Planned celebrations and events will be largely cancelled. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic lamented “one of the most difficult days in the contemporary history” of Serbia.
In April 2013, a villager shot and killed 13 people, including family members and neighbors, near Mladenovac, the same area as Thursday night’s shooting.
A large number of firearms have been circulating in the Balkans since the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the bloody wars of the 1990s. Some 765,000 weapons, including more than 232,000 pistols, are legally registered in Serbia, country of ‘about seven million people where shooting ranges are popular. A license is required to own firearms in Serbia. The Interior Ministry announced Thursday home checks to check whether weapons were kept in safes, in accordance with the rules in force. Violators will have their weapons confiscated.
Throughout Thursday, thousands of Belgrade residents laid flowers, toys, messages, and lit candles outside the Vladislav Ribnikar school in the city center where the carnage took place. place. Candlelight vigils are also held in Zagreb, Croatia, and Banja Luka, Bosnia.
Masses for the victims were celebrated in the churches of Belgrade. The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, called the shooting “a disaster like never before in our nation and homeland.”
