After a shooting at a school in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, at least eight kids and a security guard are dead. According to a statement from the interior ministry, six additional students and a teacher were hurt in the incident and have been brought to the hospital.
In connection with the attack on Wednesday morning, police detained a 14-year-old pupil at the Vladislav Ribnikar school in the heart of Belgrade. According to investigators, the suspect is alleged of using his father’s gun. Investigation into the motives behind the incident is ongoing.
Soon after 08:40 local time (11:40 MUT), police officers wearing bulletproof vests and helmets cordoned off the area around the school in the central Vracar neighborhood.
While giving a statement, the interior ministry said, “The police sent all available patrols immediately to the spot and arrested a suspected minor – a seventh grade student who is suspected of firing several shots from his father’s gun in the direction of students and school security.”
“All police forces are still on the ground working intensively to shed light on all the facts and circumstances that led to this tragedy,” the ministry added later in a message.
Local media showed images of what was allegedly the suspect being escorted away from the scene by police, with his hands bound and his head covered by a jacket.
The three children who were shot, including two13-year-old boys and one girl, have been taken to a nearby hospital in Tirsova.
The boys have lower extremity gunshot wounds, according to Dr. Sinisa Ducic, the clinic’s director, who also told reporters that they were stable and spoke to state broadcaster RTS.
“They are being monitored and receiving therapy,” he added.
But he claimed that the girl was undergoing surgery because she had a serious head injury.
One of the students’ fathers, Milan Milosevic, said that his daughter was in the class where the gun was fired and that she was able to flee. “[The boy] first shot the teacher and then he started shooting randomly,” he told broadcaster N1.
Milan Nedeljkovic, mayor of the school’s neighbourhood in central Vracar, said doctors were struggling to save teacher’s life.
Although Serbia’s strict gun laws make mass shootings relatively uncommon, the nation has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in Europe.
Following wars and unrest in the 1990s, the western Balkans are flooded with hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons. The number of firearms per 100 persons in Serbia is estimated to be 39.1, which places it third in the world behind the US and Montenegro.
