At least eight people have died and 13 have been injured, seven of whom are in critical condition, in a shooting in the Serbian town of Mladenovac, some 60 kilometers south of Belgrade, on Thursday evening, Serbian news agency Tanjug reported. Serbian police, using a powerful search device, claim to have surrounded the attacker, 21-year-old UB, who witnesses said opened fire from a moving car. Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic described the incident as a “terrorist act,” Serbian television reported. It is the second mass shooting in Serbia in two days after that of a 13-year-old student who killed eight classmates and a security guard at a Belgrade school on Tuesday.
Serbia’s Interior Ministry has reported that the Whirlwind operation was launched to hunt down the attacker, noting that the young man “is surrounded but refuses to surrender” and that he is shooting at police forces. All available patrols in the area have been relegated to the towns of Mladenovac and Mali Požarevac, with all access blocked in an operation also involving helicopters.
At the moment, the reasons why the young man started shooting with an automatic weapon from a car near Mladenovac around eleven o’clock at night are unknown. Immediately after that, he left the scene of the shooting, and the operation began chasing him. Local media have confirmed that the young man was involved in an altercation in the yard of an educational center and left, but returned shortly after and started shooting. He then drove on in his car and shot at random in three other locations, reports Portal, which reports that at least one police officer and the gunman’s sister were among the fatalities.
A Serbian police officer searches a vehicle after the attack on Friday. ANTONIO BRONIC (Portal)
Just this Friday, a three-day mourning began in the country after Wednesday’s shooting at a school in Belgrade, in which a student shot dead eight classmates and a security guard and injured several boys before turning himself in. Hundreds of candlelit students attended vigils across the country on Thursday, and services were held to commemorate the victims. At the same time, hundreds of teachers gathered outside the Ministry of Education to call for more safety measures in classrooms.
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Serbia does not have a very worrying frequency of these types of events, but it is true that it does have an ingrained culture of gun ownership, particularly in rural areas. In any case, there are many weapons in the country, many from the recent wars in the Balkans, but also under strict official control. Automatic weapons are banned and periodic amnesties have been issued for owners to turn them in. After Tuesday’s shooting, the government announced it would veto the issuance of new gun licenses and announced a review of the conditions under which owners keep them.
Nevertheless, there have been a few mass shootings in recent years. In April 2013, a resident of the Mladenovac region shot dead 13 family members and neighbors. In 2016, a man killed five people in the north of the country; In 2015, four other people were killed in a shooting at the shooter’s brother’s wedding.
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