A 21-year-old man in Serbia on Thursday evening killed eight people and injured 14 others in the second armed attack in the country in less than two days. The man suspected of being the perpetrator of the massacre, identified only by his initials (UB), was arrested on Friday. The reasons for the attack are not known for now, but the local media have released some more details on the dynamics of the attack. Shootings of this type are quite rare in Serbia, also due to the very strict laws on possession of weapons.
According to Serbian public television RTS, shortly before the attack the man had had a lite with some people in the courtyard of a school in Dubona, about fifty kilometers south of Belgrade, the Serbian capital. At that point, he allegedly left and then returned to the scene with a rifle and a pistol with which he began shooting, killing a police officer he had argued with and the officer’s sister. According to initial reports, he continued to shoot while he was in a car, hitting passers-by in the cities of Mladenovac and Dubona and heading towards other nearby towns. Two of the injured people, aged 21 and 23, are hospitalized in serious condition.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said the suspected man was wearing a T-shirt with neo-Nazi symbols at the time of the shooting. The Serbian Interior Ministry said he did it arrested Friday morning near the city of Kragujevac, 140 kilometers south of Belgrade, where, again according to RTS, he arrived by boarding a taxi and threatening the taxi driver, who then informed the police. The man it was hidden at his grandfather’s house, where he was found in possession of four grenades, a Kalashnikov rifle and various ammunition. In addition to him, his grandfather and an uncle were also arrested.
The day before, a 13-year-old boy had entered a primary school in Belgrade, killing 8 students and a security guard with gunshots: the perpetrator of the shooting was a student of the school, who confessed to the murders to the police, explaining that have been planning the attack for some time.
In light of the two episodes, President Vučić said he wanted to strengthen the measures on the possession of weapons in Serbia: although the laws are already very strict, it is estimated that there are around 670,000 in the country out of a population of around 6.8 million of inhabitants, among those left in circulation after the wars in the Balkan area in the 1990s and those held illegally. The last similar shooting in Serbia had taken place in 2013 by a former soldier who had killed 13 people.