A NEW MASS SHOOTING IN SERBIA

LEAVES EIGHT DEAD AND THIRTEEN INJURED

The shooter opened fire with an automatic weapon at a group of people from a moving vehicle near the town of Mladenovac, about 60 km south of Belgrade, and then fled, RTS reported earlier .

Serbian police arrested the alleged perpetrator near the central town of Kragujevac on Friday morning, state television (RTS) reported.

After several hours of tracking, a man was arrested on Friday morning. "UB, born in 2002", according to the Serbian government, is suspected of having committed the killing with an automatic weapon in three villages near Mladenovac, about sixty kilometers from the capital. This is "one of the most difficult days in the contemporary history" of the country, lamented Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. Many police and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, and helicopters were flying over the scene.

Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic called the incident a "terrorist act".

Worried relatives gathered outside the Belgrade emergency medical center, where at least eight of the injured were taken to hospital, the N1 television channel reported. Health Minister Danica Grujicic briefly visited the center.

Three days of national mourning

This new shooting occurred the day after the shooting, by a 13-year-old student, of eight children and a guard in a school in Belgrade, a killing that deeply shocked the country. Seven people - six students and a teacher - were also injured in the attack, and two were still in critical condition on Thursday after undergoing a series of surgeries.

The assailant was arrested shortly after the killings in the schoolyard, where he was awaiting the arrival of the police, and was placed in a psychiatric hospital. The shooter's father, a reputable doctor, owner of the weapon used, was arrested and must be heard Friday by a prosecutor. The mother was also arrested.

Three days of national mourning were declared from Friday. Planned celebrations and events will be largely cancelled. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic lamented "one of the most difficult days in the contemporary history" of Serbia.

The head of state also announced on Friday a vast "disarmament" plan aimed at recovering hundreds of thousands of weapons from the inhabitants of this Balkan country, where some 765,000 weapons, including more than 232,000 pistols, are legally registered.

According to the Swiss NGO Small Arms Survey, Serbia was in 2018 the third country in the world for the circulation of firearms (tied with Montenegro), behind the United States and Yemen, with 39 guns per 100 inhabitants.

Arms stocks accumulated during the war

Indeed in the 1990s, due to the wars that led to the end of Yugoslavia, then the conflicts in the different areas of the region, a large number of firearms circulated in the Balkans. Already in 1989, under the Tito regime, 6.1 million small arms and light weapons were recorded, according to a report by the Ministry of Defense and Iris in 2017.

The end of the fighting led to a drop in demand, but did not lead to a decrease in the number of weapons in circulation. The maintenance of the local arms industry is particularly in question, according to Iris. “Whether in Serbia, Croatia or Montenegro, small arms and light weapons continue to be produced,” the report explains. The latter also highlights the "misappropriation in the stocks of the army" and "corruption", linked in particular to "the low wages of the workers and the meager pay of the soldiers".

"Disarm" the country

According to the Swiss NGO Small Arms Survey, in 2018 there were 2.7 million firearms held by civilians in Serbia, for 7 million inhabitants. Of these, 1.18 million were officially registered and 1.53 million undeclared. "Gun culture is well entrenched here," Predrag Petrovic, of the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, a Serbian NGO, told German media Deutsche Welle in 2016.

The Interior Ministry announced on Thursday home checks to check whether weapons were kept in safes, in accordance with the rules, adding that offenders would have their weapons confiscated. But the president went further on Friday. In particular, he promised a revision of the license to carry light weapons.

“We are going to carry out an almost complete disarmament of Serbia,” Aleksandar Vucic declared during a press conference broadcast live, a few hours after the second shooting.