Serbian mass shooting leaves 8 dead and 13 injured

A tragic shooting last night in the vicinity of Belgrade, Serbia, resulted in the deaths of eight individuals and injuries to another 13. This shocking incident comes in the wake of another mass shooting in Serbia just one day earlier.

Serbian authorities are reportedly searching for a 21 year old male suspect after a warrant was issued for his arrest. RTS, Serbia’s public broadcaster, relayed that police had closed in on the area where the attacker was believed to be hiding.

The attack occurred at 11pm local time, with an automatic weapon being fired from a moving vehicle near Mladenovac, a town south of the capital. Serbia’s Interior Ministry provided this information to CNN, further stating that the shooter managed to flee the scene after the incident.

Labelled as “a terrorist act” by Bratislav Gasic, Serbia’s Interior Minister, the eight individuals who sustained serious injuries were transported to an emergency centre. Further to this, police units and helicopters have been deployed in the search for the attacker, with emergency vehicles headed to Mladenovac.

Serbian cable news channel N1 revealed that no details have been provided regarding a possible motive for the shooting.

This dreadful event follows a separate shooting on Wednesday in Belgrade, in which a seventh-grade student used pistols and Molotov cocktails to murder eight children and a security guard at his school. The tragedy left the nation reeling and caused immeasurable sorrow throughout the capital.

Yesterday, RTS reported on several incidents involving students possessing weapons or devising plans for attacks. Despite a high level of gun ownership in Serbia, the country has not traditionally experienced high levels of gun violence. However, a number of mass shootings have occurred in recent years.

In 2016, five people were murdered in a cafe in northern Serbia. Another brutal incident unfolded in 2015 when a man killed four people (including his wife and new daughter-in-law and her parents) after his son’s wedding. 2013 saw a 60 year old Balkan wars veteran kill 13 people, including relatives and neighbours, in a village near Belgrade. Finally, in 2007, a 38-year-old man took the lives of nine people in the village of Jabukovac in eastern Serbia.