After two gun attacks in Serbia that killed a total of 17, Head of State Aleksandar Vučić announced a large-scale disarmament campaign for the Balkan state. “We will carry out an almost complete disarmament of Serbia.”
After two gun attacks in Serbia that killed a total of 17, Head of State Aleksandar Vučić announced a large-scale disarmament campaign for the Balkan state. “We will carry out an almost complete disarmament of Serbia,” Vučić said at a press conference on Friday. The campaign includes both the mass inspection of registered guns and increased action against illegal gun ownership. Hundreds of thousands of firearms were to be taken out of circulation in this way.
On Wednesday, a 13-year-old student shot dead eight children and a security guard and injured seven other people at his school in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The police then took him into custody. Due to his age, the perpetrator is not yet of criminal age in Serbia. According to the investigators, he had drawn up a detailed plan and a death list before his crime. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. The shooter’s father, a recognized doctor who owned the murder weapon, was arrested. He is due to be heard by a prosecutor on Friday. The mother was also taken into custody.
On Thursday, an attacker shot dead eight people and injured 13 others from a moving car near the town of Mladenovac. The alleged perpetrator was arrested after a large manhunt. More than 600 police officers, including members of the anti-terrorist unit, were deployed with helicopters, drones and thermal imaging cameras on Friday morning, the state news agency Tanjug reported. The motives of the alleged shooter were initially unclear. Interior Minister Bratislav Gašić described the bloody deed on Friday night as a “terrorist act”. However, he did not elaborate on this.
Firearm attacks within a short period of time shake Serbia
The two acts had severely shaken the country, in which gun attacks rarely occur. After the attack at the school, Vučić had already announced stricter gun controls and a two-year moratorium on issuing gun licenses.
Funeral services were held in the Belgrade churches, and the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, called the gun attack on the school a “disaster such as our nation and homeland has never seen.” There will be a three-day national mourning starting Friday. In the Croatian capital of Zagreb and in Banja Luka, the capital of the Serbian republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, people commemorated the dead with flowers and candles.
According to government information, more than 760,000 firearms are registered in Serbia, a country of 6.8 million people. Many weapons are also in circulation in the region as a result of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.
Guns and shooting ranges are popular in Serbia. However, a firearms license is a prerequisite for owning firearms.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
