8 dead in 2nd mass shooting in Serbia within a day

Belgrade, May 5

In a second mass shooting within a day in Serbia, at least eight people were killed and 10 others injured after a gunman reportedly fired an automatic weapon from a moving vehicle in a village south of capital Belgrade, authorities said on Friday.

The incident took place at around 11 p.m. on Thursday night in Dubona and Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic identified the 21-year-old suspect as Uros B, who is currently absconding, reports CNN.

Health Minister Danica Grujicic, and the head of the Security Intelligence Agency, Aleksandar Vulin, have reportedly travelled to the area in the early hours of Friday.

On Friday morning, Serbian media said that special police forces had arrived at the villages Dubona and Mladenovac, the BBC reported.

Photos from the scene show police officers stopping cars at checkpoints as they try to locate the gunman, while a helicopter, drones and multiple police patrols also searched for the suspect in the area around Dubona.

Local media reports said the gunman started the shooting spree after having an argument with a police officer in a park in Dubona earlier on Thursday evening.

Without providing additional details, the Interior Ministry told CNN that they are treating the massacre as an act of "domestic terrorism".

All special police units are engaged, including an anti-terrorism unit, helicopter unit, and police forces from the cities of Belgrade and Smederevo, it added.

On Wednesday, a 13-year-old who shot dead eight fellow students and a security guard at the Vladislav Ribnikar primary school in central Belgrade.

President Aleksandar Vucic described the attack as "the most difficult day in the modern history of our country".

The massacre prompted Vucic to propose tighter restrictions of gun ownership, includingan audit on firearms licences and a tightening of the rules around who can access shooting ranges.

He had also suggested that the age of criminal liability may be lowered to 12 in the wake of the killings.

Mass shootings are comparatively rare in Serbia, which has very strict gun laws, but gun ownership in the country is among the highest in Europe.

The western Balkans are awash with hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons following wars and unrest in the 1990s. In 2019, it was estimated that there are 39.1 firearms per 100 people in Serbia -- the third highest in the world, behind the US and Montenegro.

In the deadliest shooting since then, Ljubisa Bogdanovic killed 14 people in the central village of Velika Ivanca in 2013, and Nikola Radosavljevic killed nine and wounded five in the eastern village of Jabukovac in July 2007.