A young man opened fire with an automatic weapon in three villages near Belgrade and killed 8 peoplejust hours after a student shot dead 9 people at a school in the Serbian capital.
14 people were injured, some of them life-threatening.
The Serbian police arrested the attacker U.B. near the town of Kragujevac, a hundred kilometers from the place where the crime was committed.
The man was born in 2002.
The shooting in three villages near the town of Mladenovac, 42 km south of Belgrade, is the second in the Balkan country in just two days.
“The villain was arrested and will never see the light of day again. He will not be released from prison.” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said.
He announced a series of measures, including the “disarmament of Serbia”.
The shooting
According to local media, the suspect in the second shooting was involved in an argument in a schoolyard on Thursday night, then left, only to return with a rifle and a handgun.
He opened fire and continued to shoot people randomly from a moving car.
Serbian public broadcaster RTS reported that an off-duty police officer and his sister were among the dead.
Victims are randomly selected. Some of the injured were taken to a hospital in Smederevo.
Four people died there. Three were operated on.
There are also injured children.
Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic described the shooting as terrorist act.
Vucic announced “disarmament of Serbia”
The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, announced that the country will take new measures.
“For the second time in the last 48 hours, we have to address the people, I express my condolences for the people who were criminally killed that night. Every word is difficult, redundant and at the same time insufficient. This is an attack on our entire country”President Vucic said in an address from the presidency together with members of the Serbian government.
We will recruit 1,200 police officers in the next six months and transfer another 1,000 officers to schools. Next year we will ensure that there is always a policeman in every school. We want to provide peace of mind to our children and parents, Vucic said, quoted by Serbian media.
The president announced that disarmament of Serbia would follow and such checks would be made, after which Serbia would be left with 30,000-40,000 weapons.
Vucic said the shooting that night was a terrorist attack in which special forces were tasked with arresting or neutralizing a terrorist.
“The villain was arrested and will never see the light of day again. He will not be released from prison.” the Serbian president said.
He announced that the government will adopt a conclusion ordering the Ministry of the Interior to urgently prepare changes to the ammunition law, which will tighten the conditions for carrying weapons.
“We will completely disarm Serbia. The penalties for possession of illegal weapons will be very high, so let’s see how you can do something like what happened yesterday.” Vucic said.
He added that the conditions for using hunting weapons will also be tightened.
The Serbian president announced that a meeting of the Security Services Coordination Bureau will take place today.
More on the topic:
We forgot our children
“There is one big question, not only for Serbia, but for Europe and the world – What is happening, where did we get lost, where does such aggression come from. We have to find ways to stop all of this, but it’s not an easy job“.
This is how the Serbian ambassador to our country, Željko Jović, commented on bTV about yet another tragedy in his homeland.”I will try to be closer to my children. We forgot our children. We work 20 hours a day, they are almost alone. The education that begins in the family must continue – both in primary school, in secondary school and in university must be included if we want to create normal people“, he also said.
The tragedies ignited a debate about the general state of the nation
Although Serbia is full of weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s, mass shootings in the country are extremely rare, the Associated Press notes.
Wednesday’s school shooting in Belgrade was the first such incident in Serbia’s modern history. The last mass killing before this week’s shootings was in 2013, when a war veteran killed 13 people in a village in central Serbia.
Last night, students and other people dressed in black filled the streets around the school in Belgrade.
Thousands of people lit candles and left toys and flowers to honor the memory of the victims.
The tragedy at the Belgrade school has ignited debates about the overall state of the nation after decades of crisis and conflict, the aftermath of which has created a state of constant uncertainty and instability, along with deep political divisions, AP notes.
Dozens of high school teachers gathered last night in front of the Ministry of Education building in downtown Belgrade to demand improvements in school security and the education system, Reuters adds. The unions in the field of education in Serbia have announced a strike for today.
Because of the shooting at the school, Serbia is in three days of mourning starting today.
2023-05-05 10:30:26
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