‘Terrorist Act’: At Least Eight Killed in Second Serbian Mass Shooting in Two Days

At least eight killed and 14 wounded including children, reports say, after a drive-by shooting in Serbia that came just one day after the country’s first mass shooting in years at a school in the capital.

A man has been arrested in the town of Kragujevac, south of Serbian capital Belgrade, after what the nation’s interior minister called a “terrorist act”. According to reports in Serbian newspaper Politika a gunman shot at members of the public from a car.

The interior ministry said: “Members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, after an extensive search, arrested U. B. (2002) in the vicinity of Kragujevac. He is suspected of killing eight people and wounding 14 with a firearm last night.”

Several of those injured are said to be in critical condition and the death toll may yet rise. The youngest victim is 15 years old.

It is alleged a man identified as 21-year-old ‘Uros B.’ killed a police officer and a woman before driving to a park and shooting young people there. According to Politika, Serbs have noted the symbolism of the place chosen for the killing, as the park is situated at a monument on top of the place where German occupying forces massacred local residents during the Second World War.

The paper reports:

…upon arriving at the park, [he] asked the gathered to lie down on the ground, and then started shooting at them.

According to a Politika reporter from the scene of the crime, traces of blood and body parts of the victims and wounded are visible in the park.

It is claimed a local tried to wrestle the rifle from the killer at the park massacre “but failed”. It is unclear if the would-be-hero is among the dead or wounded.

Serbian broadcaster B92 cites the Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gašić who said of the mass shooting “this is a terrorist act”. No motivation is yet known, but the grandfather of the accused has also been arrested as of Friday morning, after police found “bombs, an automatic rifle and ammunition in his house”.

This shooting came just one day after another mass shooting, said to be the first of its kind in Serbia in years, at a school in capital city Belgrade. Nine were killed and seven injured at the school, most of them children.