A security guard died and at least five students were wounded after a schoolboy opened fire in a downtown Belgrade school on Wednesday morning, Serbian police said.
Police said a seventh-grade student had been arrested. Officers in helmets and bulletproof vests cordoned off the area around the Vladislav RIbnikar elementary school in the central Vracar neighbourhood, where the shooting took place.
“I saw kids running out from the school, screaming. Parents came, they were in panic. Later I heard three shots,” a girl who attends a high school adjacent to Vladislav Ribnikar told state TV RTS.
Casualties are being treated and an investigation into the motives behind shooting is under way, police said in a statement, without elaborating.
Mass shootings are comparatively rare in Serbia, which has very strict gun laws. But the western Balkans are awash with hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons following wars and unrest in the 1990s.
Serbian authorities have issued several amnesties for owners to hand in or register illegal guns.
(Reuters)