Eight dead in 2nd Serbia mass shooting
Police arrested a suspect after eight people were killed in Serbia’s second mass shooting in just two days, as President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday responded to what he said was a “terrorist attack” with proposed tough new gun control measures.
The Balkan country was already reeling from a mass shooting on Wednesday, when authorities say a 13-year-old boy shot dead nine and wounded seven at a school in Belgrade before turning himself in, Reuters reported.
Serbs had just begun three days of mourning on Friday for those victims as news broke of the second incident, which authorities said occurred late on Thursday in the village of Dubona, 42 km south of Belgrade.
State broadcaster RTS said the suspect, a young man, had been involved in an altercation in a school yard. He left and then returned with an assault rifle and a handgun, opened fire and continued to shoot at people at random from a moving car.
“The suspect U.B., born in 2002, has been apprehended in the vicinity of the city of Kragujevac, he is suspected of killing eight people and wounding 14 overnight,” Serbia’s Interior Ministry said in a statement. An investigation was ongoing.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani offered his condolences to Serbia’s government and nation over the incident.