Suspect arrested after killing eight, injuring 14 in second mass shooting in Serbia in a week

At least eight people were killed and 14 others injured in Serbia late Thursday after an armed man opened fire from a moving vehicle on passers-by before he was arrested by the police in an extensive manhunt.

The incident took place near Mladenovac, about 50–60 kilometers south of the capital Belgrade, when an attacker, believed to be a 21-year-old man, used an automatic weapon to shoot randomly at people, across multiple villages around Mladenovac, RTS Television reported, firstly in the village of Dubona, then Malo Orašje then in Šepšin.

According to local media reports, a police officer and his sister were among the dead in Malo Orašje.

The police launched a manhunt as it deployed special helicopter units, drones, and a team of officers to search for the suspect throughout the difficult terrain.

"The suspect U.B., born in 2002, has been apprehended in the vicinity of the city of Kragujevac, he is suspected of killing eight people and wounding 14 overnight," the Serbian Interior Ministry said in a statement on Friday morning. It added that the investigation was ongoing.

The director of the intelligence agency the BIA, Aleksandar Vulin, and minister of health Danica Grujičić visited the injured at a hospital in Belgrade, where worried family relatives lined up outside in the hope of their speedy recovery.

Bratislav Gašić, the minister of internal affairs, called the attack “an act of terrorism”.

The suspect, according to local media, was involved in an altercation in a school yard late on Thursday and left but returned with an assault rifle and a handgun. He opened fire and continued to shoot at people at random from a moving car.

Serbia school shooting: Teenager kills 9 in Belgrade classroom

A seventh-grader was arrested after calling police and admitting to the schoolyard shooting, police said.

The attack comes days after a deadly attack that took place in the Balkan country when a 13-year-old student shot dead nine fellow pupils at a school in downtown Belgrade on Wednesday.

The incident is being called the worst school shooting in Serbia's recent history, where the shooter, Kosta Kecmanović, used two of his father’s guns to fire.

Kecmanović is too young to face criminal charges and will be placed in a psychiatric institution, but his parents have also been arrested.

The Interior Ministry has appealed to all firearm owners to keep their guns locked in safes, warning those who do not abide will have their weapons seized, while authorities on Thursday moved to further tighten gun control.

“We have had too much violence for too long,” psychologist Zarko Trebjesanin told N1 television. “Children copy models. We need to eliminate negative models … and create a different system of values.”

Mass shootings in Serbia are rare as the country has strict gun laws, yet the Balkan nation is among the top five countries of the world in the number of firearms per person as it is awash with weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s.

The last mass shooting was in 2013 when a war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.

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